


Back to Day One.

by faerywhimsy (persephone20)



Series: A History of Addiction [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Drug Use, Episode: s03e01 The Empty Hearse, Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, M/M, Mind Palace, Missing Scene, Moriarty in Sherlock's mind palace, PTSD Sherlock, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-10 02:47:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 40,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1153851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephone20/pseuds/faerywhimsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate title, </p><p>
  <b>Sherlock: Never One to Make Things Easier.</b>
</p><p>When Sherlock finally comes back to London, he's a broken man. It will take John Watson to fix him. Unfortunately, John's still mad/engaged/moved out/generally not available right now.</p><p>You know... until he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are again. It's been a month and I've finally watched each episode of Sherlock at least twice and am ready to write fanfic.
> 
> Feel free to follow my increasingly Sherlock obsessed Tumblr: [ faerywhimsy.tumblr.com](http://faerywhimsy.tumblr.com/)

_”It’s raining, it’s pouring,  
Sherlock is boring.”_

Sherlock tilts his head, squints his eyes. It’s too much. After the torture, to come back to London and relative safety... He knows what this is. The reaction to safety after _years_ of keeping it together while in constant danger. Because he knows what it is, he understands it, he should be able to overcome it.

_”It’s raining, it’s pouring..._

Nevertheless, there is Moriarty’s voice, familiar as an old friend, only more sinister, doing its best work to keep him down in the dungeon of his mind palace.

“No,” he murmurs under his breath. He defeated Moriarty, not only Moriarty, but his whole network. He’s not going to let this... _shadow_ of him from his own mind overcome him this way. 

In his mind’s eye, Moriarty’s lopsided smile is swinging back and forth towards him mockingly. 

Sherlock takes a deep breath in and holds it, attempting to stare straight forward, through the illusion.

It would have been easier were John here. But John hasn’t forgiven him yet. Not only that, but he lives away from Baker St now. With Mary. 

Mary. 

If Sherlock had enough brain space unoccupied right now, he would be dedicating more time to understanding her; this _woman_ in whom John had invested so much time. 

Unfortunately, that’s not to be. 

But at least Moriarty’s disturbing grin is only in the background of his mind, now. Sherlock takes two steps away from him, both physically and mentally. Mentally, those steps have the purpose of taking him out of the dungeon. The closed door means he can only hear a vague humming from Moriarty, chained and tied up in a straight jacket of Sherlock’s making. 

But this level isn’t much better. Sherlock shakes his head, but knows from experience this won’t be enough to displace the memories of so many situations, so many versions of him being broken down in so many different ways in the last 24 months. He hasn’t been in London long enough yet to replace those memories with something new. Right now, this recent history still stays very much a part of him. 

He just knows, if he could get through to John, he’d be able to start piecing parts of his life with the other man—memories of them in Baker St, in their _real_ life—in place of this... hell. However, unfortunately, he knows the other man is not ready for this yet. 

So he goes to the only other option he has. 

His physical steps take him to his phone, left carelessly beside John’s old chair.

_*_

Mycroft disclaims surprise at a phone call coming from his younger brother. For all his reaction, he might have thought not to hear from Sherlock again for at least a year after pulling him out of his last torture chamber and cleaning him up. 

Though Sherlock will never admit it, Mycroft did save him, did pull him out of a situation just as he’d run out of the will to find his way out. 

After chess, they play another game together; a _child’s_ game. By this time—although neither of them acknowledge it verbally—Mycroft is aware that there is currently something wrong with his brother, that he may not have pulled him out in time. 

Only once does Mycroft attempt to even put that thought into words. 

“Are you... okay?’ he asks. The words sound clunky and confused, like he is used to saying all three words, but never together. 

Sherlock flickers up at him a dismissive glance. “Of course I am,” he mumbles, and that is the end of that. 

After one confusing conversation about goldfishes, Mycroft leaves and Sherlock goes to bed. It’s barely seven o’clock, but it’s getting dark. Sherlock’s eyes stay open as he lies fully clothed, stiff on his back, and stares at the ceiling. There are 718 small holes in the plaster of the ceiling in his room. He’s counted it before and, right now, he counts it again.

Though he’s not _scared_ of the dark—you have to have _emotions_ to feel scared—Sherlock does feel differently about this than before he left. About a lot of things. Another half hour passes after his, rather boring, counting game. Sherlock attempts to amuse himself with something else, anything else, in the room.

And that is when he remembers it. A small syringe, taped to the bottom of the drawer in his dresser. He’d bought the drugs shortly after moving into Baker St and kept them there to prove he no longer needed them. It had become a contest of sorts; how many days he could find something more interesting to do. Lestrade had helped. It had been 48 days since his last hit.

Then John had moved in. 

Sherlock’s feet swept off the bed before he properly thought about what he was doing. From the deepest recesses of his mind palace, he could hear Moriarty calling back at him. He ignored it. Irrelevant data. Moriarty had not existed for him the last time he’d been shooting up, and he was dead now—apart from in his mind—so...

Between two fingers and a thumb, Sherlock brought the syringe up to eye level and stared at it coldly. He hadn’t consciously thought of the combination of how many days, weeks, months, years it had been since his last hit but, as he stared at the substance, he found the numbers coming to him easily. 

A fresh start then, hmm? Time to go back to Day One.


	2. Chapter 2

For a change, neither good or bad, it's John’s voice that day instead of Moriarty’s that follows him. It's no big surprise. How many years had John been doing exactly what Molly is supposedly been there for? Even she tried to be a replacement John for him. It must have been residual effects of the drugs that made Sherlock consider Molly a suitable companion to solving crimes. 

There is no replacement-John better than the one Sherlock himself created and fed during his time away. The John who kept him sane by speaking to him when he was kept in isolation and fed only irregular meals. The John who pointed out the human errors that Sherlock couldn’t account for on his own. 

That got him out of more than one scrape early on. Only Sherlock knew how much he came to rely on the John inside his head. 

_”Smart ass.”_

John says significantly different things now, since the altercation in the restaurant with real-John. His words are filled with derision and scorn and are the opposite of helpful. Sherlock feels a light sheen of spontaneous sweat dampen his brow as he waves these words away, almost as if Molly and Lestrade behind and beside him can hear John as well as he. 

Most certainly they can hear him answer as he tells John to shut up. Twice in the period of time they are looking over the fake Jack the Ripper manuscript.

He’s conflicted as he waves away John’s words. If they didn’t come at such an inconvenient time—ie: the middle of an investigation—he would savour them as a connection to John, rather than the distraction they were. Ultimately, he knows they are distraction. John’s voice in his head is no more real than Moriarty.

Yet, always before, John was the ultimate accompaniment. He shone light upon Sherlock’s brilliance while never taking any of it for himself. He documented their cases in that ridiculous blog, which subsequently became the cause of some of their most interesting cases. Lestrade and the London PD had never really been in the habit of promoting him the way John’s blog did. 

Everything John ever said about him had a simple ring of honesty to it, the sort that came from the fact that no one had ever known him quite the way John did. Oh, Mycroft had grown up with and shaped him—saw him as the sensitive boy who saw too much and understood too much and was inevitably overwhelmed by all of it, and turned him into someone who could catalogue all of that information coolly and function usefully—but it was John who took the time to bring out the man he’d become and befriend him. 

And that’s why Sherlock can’t help but find credence even in every negative word replacement-John speaks.

_“You forgot to put your collar up.”_

It’s distracting as hell.

Molly and Lestrade look at each other, but Sherlock tunes them out. He’s already so tired of them. Not just them, but everything else. When he first came back, he wanted the opportunity to sink his teeth into London again. But, it seem, London is so very dull without John to share it with. 

In the end, he thanks Mary for her services and says something daft about it being a thank you. For his life. Which, he supposes, it is. A fairly shallow thank you all told. She chooses that point to enlighten him about her new relationship status. 

Both Molly Hooper and Lestrade are exceedingly stupid if they think Sherlock didn’t notice the way they’d been looking at each other all afternoon, whenever they thought he wasn’t watching. _How_ long had they known him? He saw _everything._

Though, he supposes there’s the possibility that neither of them have noticed it yet themselves. He gives the relationship between Molly and her new beau 14 months. Tops. 

*

When John is kidnapped and put beneath the Guy Faulkes bonfire, it might have been a second opportunity for Sherlock to decipher this woman, this Mary Morstan. Unfortunately, John is buried underneath a Guy Faulkes bonfire, which just happens to be a bit more important. 

He knows he gives himself away that night—the desperation he shows in pulling away burning logs and getting to the man trapped beneath is far more than what would be traditionally attributed between two heterosexual men... friends... estranged at that—but Mary doesn’t mention it, and John is too relieved at being alive to notice anything at all. 

That’s when Sherlock realises he has taught John nothing in their time together. For all of his positive traits, the other man sees, but does not observe. 

No, nothing about his strange attachment to John is mentioned then and, although elusive Mary Morstan remains elusive to him once more, he does gather some relevant points about her to fit into his mind palace. They don’t go towards forcing Moriarty away, but one of the torture scenes in the south of Italy becomes just a bit dimmer.

The ride to the hospital is awful. John is bleeding from the head. Mary is cradling him in her arms while Sherlock is yelling at the driver to go _faster_. They arrive at the hospital, and then comes the fun of pulling John from the car into the building. 

"You don't have to do this," John says, pushing against Mary and rebounding against Sherlock. "I can walk. You don't have to do this."

John's voice sounds muffled and disordered and he's swaying more than Sherlock judges is healthy. A quick look at Mary show's she's seeing the same things as he. Her face is pale, her eyes wide. 

They get him into the hospital with their help, despite John.

At the front desk of the emergency room, Sherlock and Mary both start talking at the same time. The nurse on duty asks who they are in John's life and both of them reply as though they have first right to him. 

Sherlock blinks and pauses. He looks to Mary and then away when he realises he's mis-stepped. Two years have passed. Things have changed, and Sherlock is woefully behind. 

The hospital staff get John seen to as soon as possible. He gets away with only a minor head trauma and no serious burns, which is what John has told them all along.

"I am a doctor, you know," he says pointedly.

"I know, I know," Mary says. She looks weary and Sherlock wonders if she has ever had to deal with anything like this before.

She's going to be in for a surprise if she hasn't. John lives for this stuff.

Sherlock glances at him, John's hunched shoulders and dire need of a change of clothes. Well, perhaps not right now he doesn't. Sherlock looks again to Mary, grateful that it was him she rushed to when she first got the message with the skip code. 

*

When John comes back on his own and happens to meet Sherlock’s parents, Sherlock doesn’t know if he can handle John punching him again. He doesn’t know what the tipping point will be before John appears in his head as part of a torture sequence as opposed to a couple of rough words. Because he knows—in his head as outside of it—he will not defend himself against an attack if it’s John. And the instruments he knows John will find in those lower recesses of his mind are far harsher than fists. 

What he does know is that, whichever way this conversation is to go, it’s not one he wants to have in front of his parents. So they have to go. 

Closing the door in front of them, Sherlock takes a breath, squares his shoulders and acts as though he’s fully in control of himself. 

He’s talking too fast, about nothing, about nonsense. John is going to notice, he tells himself, but it’s been two years. Two full years. Maybe John’s forgotten. Maybe John’s forgotten about his speech patterns and his temperaments, even though he’s remembered every single thing about John Watson. 

Sherlock closes his eyes and forces his rushing thoughts to slow down before he looks at John again.

It’s the first time he’s gotten to see John again, see him properly and in the day time, since he returned to London. John offers him a moment to bask in that glance as he stares out the window at what is no doubt his parents getting into a taxi or something equally banal. But it is John, and he cannot help but be glad John came to him of his own free will. 

For a minute, there, it’s almost normal. John’s chair is sitting directly behind where John’s standing. The sun is picking up the creases around John’s eyes as he smiles and Sherlock can’t help but relax for a moment in kind. It’s only a moment, though, before Sherlock remembers himself. 

And John does too. 

Forgiveness isn’t going to be so easily won as pulling John out from a burning heap. 

“Sorry.” He’s said it before, but both of them hear the difference in his tone of voice now. It’s not exasperation leading this apology. Sherlock is no longer under the mistaken impression that John will applaud him for being so clever as to get away two years ago. 

And, maybe, after seeing John’s life in danger not two nights before, Sherlock thinks he can begin to understand some of what John might be feeling right now. 

“John,” Sherlock says heavily and, without Mary there, he feels like he can finally, finally, let down all of his walls with John. “I am truly sorry for what I made you experience. Truly.”

John just stares at Sherlock as though he can’t believe what Sherlock is saying. But it’s more than that, too. Sherlock deduces that the likelihood that John will punch him again has now dropped to less than 3%. He can’t help but heave a sigh of relief at that statistic. 

“You’re... sorry,” John repeats, without breaking eye contact.

Sherlock nods his head, a nearly invisible movement. John sees it, as he knew he would. 

John’s chest puffs up, and Sherlock recognises this as his moment of relief. “So you can feel sorry, then?”

“Of course,” Sherlock says, averting eye contact at the admission. There are many things he feels sorry for. His gaze returns to John slowly. “Given what I now understand, I know you can’t forgive me immediately.”

A small burst of laughter at that, not entirely voluntary. “Well, that’s good,” John says with a huff, putting his hands on his hips and turning aside from Sherlock again. 

Sherlock feels the need to remind him that he did it for John, that whatever pain John may have felt at thinking he was dead was so that John would in fact _not be_ dead. And, the obvious point, that Sherlock was still alive. However, the last time he’d said that, John punched him in the face and Sherlock just. can't. face. that. again. Instead he takes the coward’s way out. 

“So, you shaved it off, then?” Sherlock queries, about the moustache.

*

That night, 221B Baker St is silent, and still. Sherlock is not looking at the ceiling in his room this time, but at the dresser. It turns out that a young man by the name of Billy Wiggins is a very useful friend to have. 

It’s less than a week since the last time he used; less than seven days before he turns the count of days once again back to one.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise. With this chapter, I've kept it very similar to what was outwardly going on in the train carriage scene because it was so perfect I didn't want to change it. 
> 
> Thank you for you lovely people who are already following along!

He has to make John forgive him. But how?

It’s on the way to the train platform, as John is saying he’s calling the police that the plan comes to Sherlock. He tells John not to be foolish, that the police will only get in the way and, to his relief, John still listens to him enough to put his phone away. 

John still listens to him enough to be lead onto the train platform, around the live wire, onto the train carriage which, consequently, is the bomb they are looking for.

Sherlock knows he can act. If John thought about it, he too would have known Sherlock could act—he’d seen it once before after all—but as Sherlock’s plan depended on, John is too preoccupied with the fact that the two of them might die here, together, in this train carriage.

He finds the counter immediately. It’s almost too easy, of course. From where he’s standing, he can hear John’s breathing. It’s louder now. Sherlock almost gets distracted by the sound of it. There’s a chance that, with the drugs he’s been taking, he may not be as entirely as together as he once was.

Still, the plan. The plan above all things. He needs John to forgive him. Though, at base, Sherlock has an understanding of why his best friend hasn’t done that right yet, what John doesn’t understand is that Sherlock needs him to. He _needs_ John to forgive him. For things to go back to normal again. He needs _John_.

“We need bomb disposal,” John says, which is the predictable response, the one Sherlock had prepared for. 

“There may not be time for that now,” Sherlock says, by which he means he’s called them already—earlier—which of course John is not to know. 

John looks at him in horror, incorrectly taking the expected response out of the words. 

With one foot in his ever-present mind palace, Sherlock pulls up an expression of terror that comes from a memory of the things he was forced to do in Morocco. He holds onto the memory as long as he can bear it, then gazes up into John’s apprehensive gaze.

“Oh no.” John shakes his head and turns away, starts to pace in the limited amount of space they have in the carriage. “No, no.”

“There isn’t time for that right now, John,” Sherlock says. He tries to put the right amount of pathos and empathy in his voice. He’s done it before and it works again now. 

“Oh, really? What is there time for?” John asks.

Sherlock looks into that face. It’s caustic and trying to be smart assed—like replacement-John accused him of being—but under that it’s hiding vulnerability. 

_Now_ they were getting to the crux of things. Sherlock takes a breath in. 

“John...” he starts in a low voice. He’s about to bare his soul and he’s never done that before. He’s not quite sure how it’s supposed to go. 

“Sherlock, no.” John presses his lips together and takes a shallow breath in then out. The effect lifts his shoulders and drops them briefly. He shakes his head, breaking eye contact and the moment between them. “There has to be some other way around this. Some other...” His voice drops off as his gaze drops to the counter Sherlock revealed. “Can’t we... rip that timer off, or something?”

Sherlock’s lips twist. This isn’t the way it was supposed to go. John’s ruined it without even knowing. He only just refrains from signing, but it’s at the expense of his tone of voice when he next speaks; the tone of voice that indicates that the recipient knows nothing. “That would set it off!”

“See, you know things!” John yells immediately, taking advantage of the deviation from Sherlock’s script.

The sigh comes out then, more of a growl.

It’s an unexpected act from outside of the carriage that drags them back on course again. The timer starts to tick down. Things start to happen fast then, faster even than Sherlock can plan for. He’s deviating from the script he set himself and it makes things jerky and uncontrolled. It makes _him_ jerky and uncontrolled. 

John is yelling at him again. The chances of John punching him again rise up to 15%, 32%, 45%. Sherlock holds his breath and waits for it to happen. His body is stiff, taut with expectation and he’s frozen to the spot with a host of feelings he hasn’t felt since childhood, and never wanted to again.

“Mind palace!” John tells him, not knowing what he is asking by telling Sherlock to go there. How can John know about what lies in wait for him there? Sherlock has had neither the time nor inclination to share it with him. But the percentage for John punching him again is dropping back down now that John has made his suggestion, and Sherlock knows what he must do.

He blinks several times, trying to pull away from a number of horrors that immediately jump up and try to pull him down. His mind palace is not the kind place it once was. It now takes a certain amount of dedicated focus to keep the more unpleasant aspects of that place from overcoming him and, presently, Sherlock’s attention is focused on other things. 

Like getting John to forgive him. 

Things are unravelling fast now. He looks at John. Understand what I’m trying to do, he compels him to do without actually speaking. But John doesn’t understand.

Sherlock closes his eyes. Tries to focus only on the most recent memories, times since he’s been back in London. 221B Baker St. Molly. Lestrade. Mycroft. 

“Think.” 

The word comes from one of the lower levels in his mind palace. Sherlock has a good idea which one, but it’s only a guess based on places John’s voice has appeared in the past. 

Moriarty whispers to him. 

“Think!” John again, this time causing Moriarty to whimper and go away. Sherlock isn’t entirely sure the whimper doesn’t move past his own lips. 

John doesn’t seem to care. He’s standing in front of Sherlock now, having walked up the steps. He’s leaning in towards Sherlock with his hand on the hand rail and Sherlock has no idea what to do.

“You’re not a fake, are you?” John mutters to him. “You’re something even worse.”

Sherlock opens his eyes with a shout before replacement-John can say anything further to him. He’s out of breath from his brief sojourn and finds John looking at him expectantly. 

Now, more than ever, he needs John to forgive him.

He’s not going to, Sherlock suddenly realises. He’s never going to be able to forgive what Sherlock did. How is Sherlock supposed to be able to understand what he put John through? He’s inhuman. People have said that to him before. Sally, and Anderson. Lestrade said it as a joke, on one occasion. Why would John even want to care about someone who was inhuman like him?

“Sorry,” he whispered to John, because it was the only word that seemed to work before. He feels like he’s down in his mind palace again, only this time he knows he can’t escape John while they’re in the train carriage together.

For a split minute, he wishes the bomb to go off faster so that he doesn’t have to hear whatever John’s about to say.

As a last ditch effort, a last desperate trick to buy him some time, Sherlock says simply, “Forgive me.”

“This is another one of your tricks. You’re just trying to make me say something nice,” John accuses and, for once, he is right. 

But, with a quick glance, Sherlock sees he’s bought himself another 30 seconds, another 30 seconds less that Sherlock will have to hear what John really thinks of him. 

“I wanted you not to be dead,” John utters, full of those loud breaths that so distracted Sherlock earlier. 

Sherlock looks up at him with bright eyes. “Be careful what you wish for,” he utters. Waiting. 

Waiting. 

“Look, I find it difficult. I find it difficult, this sort of stuff,” John says, and Sherlock’s nodding because he knows John isn’t a cruel man. But Sherlock has pushed him to a point. 

He looks at the timer again. One minute and a half.

“You were the best and the wisest man that I have ever known.”

Sherlock’s face goes blank with shock. This isn’t, this wasn’t... planned.

“Of course I forgive you.”

A sound forces itself out from the back of Sherlock’s throat. At first, he’s not sure what it is. Then there’s another sound that follows it. Sherlock realises that the sound is coming from him and, from the expression on John’s face, it’s not the right reaction. Not the right reaction at all. Sherlock can only think it’s relief, but then he can’t stop. There are tears streaming down his face and the sound he’s making takes on a mind of its own. Mycroft would probably call it hysteria. 

He stands up, desperate to save face and say something to John who’s looking increasingly baffled.

It doesn’t matter. For one blissful moment, the voices coming up from his mind palace are blissfully... silent.


	4. Mary.

The first time Sherlock met Mary Morstan, John punched him. Several times. Sherlock prefers not to think of that now, though he does keep inserting the occasional ‘sorrys’ into conversation to lessen the chance of any further violence occurring over the subject. Mary reassured Sherlock she’d talk John around that night, which was strange because it hadn’t occurred to Sherlock that had couldn’t do it on his own.

The second time he met Mary Morstan, she made the error of casually observing a skip code in front of him, which was an error that was also not an error because it correctly—and timely—led to the saving of John’s life. They sped John straight from the bonfire to the hospital. Both of them gave qualifications as to who they were in John’s life as though they each had first right to it. 

The third time he met Mary Morstan was the same day that he realised he didn’t have to compete with Mary for John. She wasn’t going to try to take John away from him, regardless of the fact that it was the _two_ of them who were getting married. While that fact should have reassured him, all it did instead was serve to make him conscious that John _could_ be taken away from him. 

Despite that, Sherlock likes Mary Morstan. She is good for John and she’s not one of those women who goes crazy over wedding plans. John and Mary do get engaged, of course. And it’s Sherlock, more than Mary, who appears to go ‘crazy over the wedding plans.’

That’s just a front, however. They don’t notice Sherlock has a drug problem because Sherlock doesn’t want them to know about it. He keeps his secret very carefully hidden in a place no one else ever goes.

“What did you miss most when you were away from London?” Mary asks him idly. She’s sitting on the floor in his living room and is the one who is actually closest to him, while John sits further away in his chair, pretending to read. Sherlock knows John’s pretending to read because he knows how fast the doctor reads. John alternates between turning the pages too fast and not fast enough. 

With narrowed eyes, Sherlock considers the question Mary poses to him. “The thing I missed most...” He evades the obvious answer, but the twinkle in Mary’s eyes tells him he hasn’t done so undetected. “Kung Pow Chicken,” he decides on.

“Kung Pow Chicken?” Mary repeats. The scepticism is clear in her voice.

Sherlock maintains his gaze. “What? Am I not allowed to appreciate good food?”

Mary is the one of them who breaks eye contact first. “No, of course. You can appreciate all the good food you want,” she tells him.

“Marvellous,” Sherlock drolls. “Just what I needed: Your permission.”

From the chair, John snorts, further proving he is not in fact reading his book. 

The thing about Mary is that John’s not always there when the two of them catch up. This is even more strange due to the fact that John no longer lives at 221B Baker St, which was formerly the only time Sherlock would come across—and alienate—John’s girlfriends.

“Tell me,” Sherlock says to her once, as they go over final designs for wedding invitations. “You have all this stuff at home. Why come here and drag it all with you?”

“Oh,” she says, as though that answer should be obvious. “I don’t want all this stuff cluttering up _our_ living room.”

She smiles at him, a mere crinkle of her eyes, which tells him it’s not only the obvious, it’s also not true. But then Sherlock already knew that. What he wanted to know was: why?

Had there been a conversation between John and Mary that he’d somehow missed? Surely Mary had her own friends, girlfriends whose houses she could go to with wedding preparations and clutter up _their_ living rooms. But, no. Most evenings, John and / or Mary sit with him in his living room and just... talk. Not about wedding stuff specifically. Just... anything.

Sherlock is very conscious of this fact because he’s already turned down three cases that might conflict during this time. 

On the night when John comes around to ask Sherlock to be his best man, Sherlock has never been more pleased to have a human interaction over a case to solve. This, among other things, stuns him into absolute silence for several seconds. 

The replacement-John no longer says spiteful and cruel things when they encounter one another in Sherlock’s mind palace. On occasion, he calls Sherlock out for being a jerk, but Sherlock doesn’t spend quite so much time with replacement-John now that he has the real thing back in his life. 

A quick sweep down there through memories of cases solved assures Sherlock that no single moment has ever been this breathtaking, nor taken him so by surprise. But he should have known, if anyone could do it, it would be John.

“Well that’s just getting creepy now,” John says, before standing up and coming around the table in the kitchen between them. “Sherlock?” He clicks his hands in Sherlock’s face.

Sherlock immediately snaps back to himself. He frowns. “There’s no need for that.”

“Bollocks there isn’t.” John steps back a pace and just stares at Sherlock. “You seriously don’t realise you were standing there for eight minutes, saying nothing?”

“Nonsense,” Sherlock states. “It doesn’t take that long for me to look through my mind palace.”

John raises his eyebrows. “You went to your mind palace.”

“Exactly,” Sherlock says, as though this was a completely normal response. “I had to ascertain for certain that there’d no moment in the past that had moved me quite so significantly as your request just did.”

Stunned silence settles between the two men. John’s face sags, then softens. 

“Come here, you,” he says, before pulling Sherlock into a—definitely unexpected—manly, hug. “So am I to take it you will be my best man?”

“Certainly, John,” Sherlock says gruffly. “I am the best and wisest man after all.” 

As time goes on, Sherlock knows he’s going to have to have a talk with Mary, and soon. The more he talks to her, the more he likes her and he doesn’t want her thinking that he’s going to try to spoil things between her and John any more than she’s going to spoil things between John and him.

Of course, the talk is clunky. It involves a variable outside of him—Mary—and a bunch of human emotions that he has not been able to tamp down again since his embarrassing display in the train carriage. He may have talked to Mycroft about it, had Mycroft been a more sympathetic brother, and less likely to notice Sherlock is taking drugs again on sight. 

It’s been 51 days since Sherlock had a hit.

Once again in his living room, he opens his mouth to speak at the same time as Mary turns to him to say, “So what are we going to about this bucks night of yours and John’s?”

Sherlock shuts his mouth. Then, “Excuse me?”

“The bucks night? You know, fairly traditional between men before getting married?” Mary pauses, looking at him more closely. “You have _heard_ of a bucks night before, haven’t you?”

“Of course I’ve heard of a bucks night!” Sherlock says, sounding more frustrated than the comment deserves.

Mary only raises her eyebrows and doesn’t comment. 

Sherlock works his jaw. “Well, I’m going to give John a jolly good bucks night,” he says, defensively. 

“Uh huh,” Mary says. “What are you going to do?”

“Well, we’re going to go out drinking,” Sherlock starts. “To... pubs.”

Mary is leaning on her hands, giving Sherlock’s stuttering her utmost attention. “Done this sort of thing a lot, have you?” she says, all mischievousness.

Sherlock is not amused. “I’ve got a good mind not to tell you what I was going to now.”

“Oh?” Mary asks, suddenly intrigued. “What was that, then?”

“That would rather defeat the purpose of not telling.”

“Come on, Sherlock. We both know you wouldn’t have mentioned it at all if you weren’t going to say something.” Reaching out, she suddenly pokes him in the arm, in fun. Sherlock’s still reeling from John’s hug the other week. He’s not used to physical contact. Unconsciously, he flinches.

Mary just watches him, waiting. 

“I was going to say...” Sherlock clears his throat. It’s something he’s seen John do when he feels awkward about what he’s about to say, but the method doesn’t seem to work on him. Sherlock plants his feet and braces himself, lowering his chin before looking Mary straight in the eye. “Mary,” he says lowly. “I just want you to know, whatever happens, I’m not going to come between you and John.” 

“I know,” she says. 

He’s so used to people not seeing things that are patently obvious that he’s surprised by this. “You... know,” he says. It isn’t quite a question, but almost.

“Of course I know.” Mary relaxes and smiles. “You like me.”

Sherlock blinks. “I...”

Mary tilts her head to the right. “Come on. I know you well enough to know you just wouldn’t let any stranger into your living room with all their wedding gear. You like me.”

“I like John,” Sherlock answers.

“You like _me_ ,” Mary pushes, with an eyebrow waggle.

Sherlock sighs, exasperated from the very depths of his bones. “Okay. Fine. I like you.”

Mary shrugs and doesn’t make a big deal of it. “See now,” she murmurs. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

It took Sherlock six months to properly appreciate how much he enjoyed John’s company and indeed wanted to actively keep him around. Mary’s wrangled an admission out of him in less than three. Sherlock doesn’t know whether to be impressed by that or concerned.


	5. The Stag Night.

Sherlock walks out of the shower to find a missed call from Lestrade. That’s good, because he hasn’t been consulted on a case for a couple of days, and it’s starting to make him itch under his skin. He’s been doing well—63 days without a hit—which is what he needs the cases for.

And that’s why he’s incredibly disappointed when he reads the text message Lestrade sent when he couldn’t get hold of him. 

_I HEAR YOU’RE THE BEST MAN FOR THE WEDDING. CONGRATULATIONS. WHEN’S THE STAG NIGHT? ___

__Sherlock clicks back a swift reply._ _

___THERE ISN’T GOING TO BE A STAG NIGHT. YOU’RE NOT INVITED. SH_ _ _

__It takes barely a full minute for Lestrade to reply. Must be a slow day in the office._ _

___NOT GOING TO BE A STAG NIGHT? YOU’VE GOTTA BE JOKING. JOHN’S GETTING MARRIED! ____ _

____Sherlock considers the options in front of him, and texts Lestrade back his best one._ _ _ _

_____YOUR INVITATION DEPENDS ON YOUR ABILITY TO BRING TO ME AN INTERESTING CASE. SH ____ _ _ _

______This time, Lestrade’s reply takes a little longer to come through._ _ _ _ _ _

_______CHRIST THEN. BETTER NOT COUNT ON COMING TO THE STAG NIGHT._ _ _ _ _ _ _

______Sherlock rolls his eyes. For all that Lestrade is a detective, he gives up far too easily._ _ _ _ _ _

_______THAT’S WHAT I ESTIMATED. WHAT IS ON YOUR DESK RIGHT NOW? SH_ _ _ _ _ _ _

______Lestrade calls him, then. There isn’t anything remotely interesting on the officer’s desk, barely enough for 20 minutes to go through in its entirety._ _ _ _ _ _

______But Lestrade holds off ending the phone call. “You’re really not gonna invite me to John’s stag night?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“I have something planned,” Sherlock returns._ _ _ _ _ _

______“I guessed that. What is it?” Lestrade’s lower class accent is pronounced. Sherlock annunciates his words with especial care to compensate._ _ _ _ _ _

______“A series of fully regimented bars and drinks leading myself and John to a safe and comfortable end of the night, resulting in no hangover or discomfort the following day.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______There’s a silence on the other end of the line. Then, “Phaw. You really know how to take the fun out of drinking, don’t you Sherlock?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Which is exactly the kind of response that has left you ineligible for an invitation,” Sherlock informs him, smarting. “And also the lack of an interesting case to solve.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“A night like that, and I might be happier staying at home.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“The choice has been taken out of your hands. Goodbye.” Sherlock hangs up._ _ _ _ _ _

______He looks around his living room, struggling for something else of interest. His computer shows him 17 new emails, all of which were boring. Previous habit anticipates John or Mary or both to likely to arrive within four hours._ _ _ _ _ _

______Sherlock comes close to twiddling his thumbs._ _ _ _ _ _

______Instead of that, he decides to pay John a visit at work._ _ _ _ _ _

______“What are you doing here?” Mary asks as Sherlock walks into the clinic._ _ _ _ _ _

______“I’m John’s next patient,” Sherlock says._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Oh really.” Mary makes a show of looking at the list of appointments on the screen in front of her. “That’s funny. I don’t seem to see you here. It’s... Sherlock, isn’t it?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Sherlock narrows his eyes at her, which doesn’t seem to faze Mary at all._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Go on, have a seat,” she says. “I’ll see if I can squeeze you in.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______*_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Your next patient to see you.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Mary sounds too jovial as she opens the clinic door. John isn’t looking up when he murmurs, “Come in, come in,” but he must notice that something’s up._ _ _ _ _ _

______Mary closes the door behind him with a knowing smile and a quick wave of her fingers._ _ _ _ _ _

______Sherlock sit on the patient’s chair and waits for the doctor to turn and jump in surprise._ _ _ _ _ _

______To his disappointment, John’s reaction is very understated._ _ _ _ _ _

______“You know, I feel a lot more silly now,” is all he says._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Why?” asks Sherlock. “You’re going to have to narrow it down. There are simply too many possibilities.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______John barely gives that a look. “I feel silly because the day after that restaurant debacle, there was a patient who came in here. I thought he was you. If I’d known, when you came here, that you’d come dressed as yourself, I wouldn’t have...”_ _ _ _ _ _

______John drifts off. Sherlock prompts him. The story is just getting interesting, after all. “Wouldn’t have what?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Wouldn’t have pulled his hat off and tried to remove his beard.” John winces as he says that._ _ _ _ _ _

______There’s an answering smirk trying to tug its way out to the side of Sherlock’s mouth._ _ _ _ _ _

______The two men snort with laughter._ _ _ _ _ _

______“I’m so glad you think of me as such a master of disguise,” Sherlock murmurs._ _ _ _ _ _

______“I think of you as many things, Sherlock,” says John. He shakes his head. “What are you even doing here?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“I was bored,” Sherlock admits._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Of _course_ you were.” John rolls his eyes. “I don’t suppose it matters to you that I have other clients outside. Other clients who actually need me?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Sherlock bites off the fact that he, too, needs John. But John isn’t ready to hear that yet. “Mary fit me in.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Oh.” John looks towards his closed door, and the direction his wife-to-be disappeared in. “She did, did she? I’ll be having words with her.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Sherlock’s about to answer when his message tone goes off._ _ _ _ _ _

______From Lestrade, _I’VE GOT SOMETHING,_ he writes, including the details of an address to meet him at._ _ _ _ _ _

______“I’m afraid I’ve got to go,” Sherlock says, already shoving his phone back into his pocket._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Of course you do.” John stands up with him, already resigned. “Let me know if it’s anything interesting.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Always, John,” Sherlock says on his way out, his jacket sliding around the door before it closes._ _ _ _ _ _

______*_ _ _ _ _ _

______The inevitable night of the stag night, John tries to turn Sherlock’s phone off before they even get out, but Sherlock turns it straight back on again._ _ _ _ _ _

______“I have plans tonight that include this phone,” he tells John strictly._ _ _ _ _ _

______“I’m not having you disappear on a case halfway through the night,” John says. “Especially seeing as how you didn’t invite _anyone else_.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“No one else wanted to come,” Sherlock excuses himself. “How many times do I have to tell you? None of your friends like you.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______John shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter how many times you tell me that, it’s not going to make it true.” He picks his keys and his jacket up from where he left them both just inside the door at Baker St. “Ready to go?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Sherlock nods and they leave._ _ _ _ _ _

______Two hours later, they return._ _ _ _ _ _

______“What did we do again?” John scratchs his head then trips on the first step, landing him sprawled across the bottom of the stairs. “Oops,” he says. “Didn’t mean to do that.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Are you hurt?” Sherlock asks, squinting and trying to see through the haze of this drunken fog._ _ _ _ _ _

______“’M the doctor. ‘M meant to ask that,” John returns._ _ _ _ _ _

______“So... not hurt then,” Sherlock surmises._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Not really,” John mumbles. His eyes are already closed. He looks so comfy there. It doesn’t make any sense. Sherlock knows stairs to be uncomfortable for lying on. Yet, if John’s doing it..._ _ _ _ _ _

______Sherlock lowers himself carefully, trying to hide the way he stumbles towards the bottom of the stairs._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Umf,” John says, before moving aside. He doesn’t so much as open his eyes or look at Sherlock. “Now you’re down here too.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“So it would seem.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______When Mrs. Hudson finds them both down there, they’re still too drunk to be embarrassed, but not so drunk they can’t make it up the stairs the second time._ _ _ _ _ _

______Sherlock looks at John across the other side of the room in the house they used to share together. This is it, he realises. This is why he wanted the stag night to be only about him and John. It was the last night he was going to get to spend with John like this before he and Mary got married. The only thing Sherlock had incorrectly taken into consideration how much John wanted to get sincerely drunk._ _ _ _ _ _

______They are sitting across from each other on each of their chairs. John's looking between them as though he's never noticed the distance between the two chairs and is trying to lessen it. It's an intriguing study, and one Sherlock can't seem to keep his eyes from._ _ _ _ _ _

______Before too long, John over-balances. His hand falls to Sherlock's thigh to steady himself. Like a shot, Sherlock's gaze moves from John's face to his hand._ _ _ _ _ _

______"I'm sorry," John mumbles. He too is looking at his hand, as though he can't figure out how it came to be there. Right now, Sherlock is wondering that very same thing himself, though the rest of his thoughts are probably markedly different._ _ _ _ _ _

______Very slowly, Sherlock raises his gaze back to John's, wondering what is going on in that tiny, drunken mind of his._ _ _ _ _ _

______To his surprise, John is looking back at him. "I don't mind," he says, wonderingly._ _ _ _ _ _

______"Me neither," Sherlock replies. He's surprised. He never really liked the idea of getting drunk before, always imagined it being horribly chaotic. But it's not. It's... calm and pleasant. Sherlock has a warm feeling spreading through him. He'll stay drunk all the time if this is how it feels._ _ _ _ _ _

______John's hand also doesn't move from his thigh. Instead, he moves closer._ _ _ _ _ _

______"It's your turn for a question," John says, when Sherlock raises his eyebrows towards him._ _ _ _ _ _

______"Oh? Is it? Oh." Sherlock frowns and tumbles over in his mind a question he can ask, not sure why John's telling him to ask one. "What's your favourite position?" He knows what his is. Right here._ _ _ _ _ _

______To his surprise, John bursts out laughing. As he does so, his fingers tighten slightly around Sherlock's thigh, presumedly to steady him. Sherlock's eyelids lower over his eyes suggestively._ _ _ _ _ _

______"I was meaning for the game," John says, then sucks in a breath as he sees the way Sherlock's looking at him._ _ _ _ _ _

______"The... game?" Sherlock asks. He has quite forgotten there's a game afoot._ _ _ _ _ _

______"The..." Apparently, John forgot what kind of game they were playing too. His gaze becomes a little unfocused as he drops the rest of his sentence. "Oh, hell," he says, before his lips are touching Sherlock's._ _ _ _ _ _

______Sherlock sucks in a breath, breath that seems to come from John's body and pulls the other man closer. What are they doing? What are they...?_ _ _ _ _ _


	6. Alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to say _thank you_ again to all you lovely people with your comments and bookmarks and kudos clicks. I am completely floored by the amount of positive feedback I've received while this fic is still so new. 
> 
> Thank you. 
> 
> This chapter is for all of you.

John and Mary get married. Of course they do. That’s what engaged people do. The unfortunate side effect is... without the wedding to prepare for, the easy excuse for the three of them to spend time together in Sherlock’s living room is gone.

John doesn’t bring up again what happened at the stag night before the disastrous beginnings of the Mayfly Man case. Maybe he reads Sherlock’s reaction as discomfort that over what happened. Sherlock has no idea how to bring up the matter of what happened. Even he knew that kisses like that were only supposed to happen between married couples—John and _Mary_ —so why had it happened between them?

It’s around the time of the photos that Sherlock first realises that the time to ask this question of John has been and gone. By the time he realises the murder that’s about to take place in the midst of his speech, it’s almost a relief. When he sees Janine start to dance with another man, he decides that’s another detail to be dealt with another day. 

Being alone isn’t anything Sherlock’s not used to. And it’s a lot easier now than it had been when he first came back to London. So he could be grateful to John and Mary for indulging him for so long in the lead up to their wedding while he got to his feet again.

He still leaves the wedding early. 

As he walks up the steps to 221B Baker St, and then up the additional flight of stairs to get into his flat, Sherlock realises that the last couple of months has been a shallow, hollow lie. John and Mary are about to go on their holiday, their honeymoon, but Sherlock has just come out of his. 

Sherlock stands by the window of his flat, telling himself that it’s because he’s too restless to sit. He knows his mind well enough that he can’t hide from himself that he’s waiting to see John pull up in a tax having followed him from his own reception. 

His sentimentality sickens him.

“What did you expect, Sherlock?” Moriarty is back. He’s standing behind him, but behind that is the familiar wallpaper of 221B Baker St, further confusing the matter. 

“Not now,” Sherlock murmurs. He winces, hardly daring to look more than a second behind him. Tired eyes scan an almost empty street.

“If not now, then when?” Moriarty asks in a sing-song voice.

“I said, not now!” Sherlock growls. He spins around to find Moriarty is not standing there comfortably by the fireplace. He’s fallen to the floor, unable to defend himself from within his straight jacket. As Sherlock strides slowly towards him, Moriarty’s voice picks up in pitch as he struggles to hide away in plain sight.

“Don’t hit me! Please don’t hit me!” 

He’s heard these words before, which is how they’ve found their way into his mind palace. Richard Brooks. Except, everyone in London now knows what Sherlock knew before—that there’s no such person as Richard Brooks—and the cries hit too close to home. 

_“NO!”_

Sherlock’s not even sure if it’s him or Moriarty that speaks. The other man’s eyes are wide and seeming to stare straight into Sherlock as Sherlock turns on his heel and flees away from the living room, almost running in his effort to be free of Moriary. 

There’s another surprise waiting for him in his bedroom. The Woman. She is naked, of course, and on his bed. Sherlock swallows. He’s losing control. 

“I don’t... I don’t want...” he starts.

Without speaking, she stands in one fluid movement and crosses the space between them. Only a brief hesitation stops her hand before it reaches out to touch him on the cheek. 

She tips her head to the side. “Shhh,” she says. Her lips are perfectly red, and as Sherlock fixes his attention on them, he fancies he can feel her breath puffing towards his face.

Oh, what it would be like if he could pretend all this was real. A companion on the day his John gets married. But it’s not. The knowledge runs him through like a chill.

“This isn’t real...” he tells her, like she already doesn’t know. 

Instead of the perfume he knows her to wear, the only smell surrounding them is Clar de la Lune. Sherlock can’t quite place it. He only knows that that’s not the scent that he associates with Irene Adler.

His mind palace is getting all mixed up. 

Sherlock’s Adam’s apple bobs up and down in his throat as he looks towards the dresser with the drugs taped to the underside of the drawer. He’s no longer sure if he’s actually standing in his room or in the room his mind palace has replicated. The Woman doesn’t give him too long to consider that before she turns his face back to meet hers.

“You want me,” she whispers, speaking to him for the first time, and her voice is exactly how he remembers it. Sherlock wets his lips. “You saved my life. Now let me save you.”

Though his resolve is fading, there is still enough of it left to tell what’s real from what’s out of control. If he’s going to be out of control, he’s going to do it all the way. Like everything. 

“Nobody can save me,” Sherlock mutters lowly. He doesn’t even think he’s talking to her anymore.

This time, she doesn’t try to stop him as he turns away from her, towards the dresser. He only knows for sure that this isn’t his mind palace when he finds the smack taped under the drawer and releases it into his arm. For the first time in too many days, Sherlock descends to the smack.

*

He blinks his eyes owlishly, not sure at first which level of his mind palace he has landed in. It’s not real. None of it can be certain. Sherlock relaxes, knowing that this is what he chose over reality.

*

“Oh, Sherlock.”

Mycroft stands over him. There is every inch the disapproval of the older brother in his features. Sherlock blinks slow, long blinks and struggles to push himself into a seated position. 

Disappointment floods Mycroft’s voice as disapproval floods his features. “It’s only the first day of John and Mary’s honeymoon.”

“Don’t care what you... think.” He’s a little unsteady from the after effects of the drug. He’s not used to people seeing him so soon after a hit, not used to having his mask already in place.

“I would think that was quite apparent,” Mycroft muses. “Were this so obviously not a cry for help.”

“A cry for help? Why would I cry for you?” Sherlock says scathingly.

“A very good question,” Mycroft says. It’s infuriating. “Why indeed.”

“Not now,” Sherlock tells him. An image of Moriarty in a straight jacket flashes for a brief second behind his eyes. 

“I think now is the perfect time,” Mycroft argues. “Since now is the time I have found you, and you seem woefully devoid of any other volunteers.”

“John...” Sherlock says. “I will wait—”

“Yes, I’m very aware of what it was that caused this downfall. I’m very disappointed. What have I told you about getting attached?”

“It’s done now,” Sherlock says miserably. “Nothing you can do about it anymore.”

“Quite,” said Mycroft with distaste. “So there’s only the question now of how do go about dealing with it. I suppose a new case to occupy your mind wouldn’t go amiss?”

Sherlock’s about to tell him he can go screw himself, but then he’s going to be left to his own devices, alone, and that doesn’t appeal to him either. He’s used the last of the smack in the house and is going to have to go get more anyway. 

“What kind of case?” he questions. 

Mycroft’s gives him a half-lidded stare.

*

Lestrade has been told not to let Sherlock out of his sight. Maybe, just maybe, Mycroft withheld the details as to why he would make such a request, but Sherlock doesn’t ask; doesn’t even insinuate there’s anything to ask about. 

Doesn’t matter. Lestrade isn’t a master investigator, but after the he clocks off from his shift, he asks if Sherlock wants to go to the pub with him. 

Lestrade’s never asked Sherlock to the pub before. It doesn’t take a genius to guess why.

“If you’re so desperate for company, why don’t you ask Molly to come out with you?” Sherlock asks. He’s already turning away, assuming that his comment about Molly will stall him for long enough to make a getaway.

“Now, now,” Lestrade says, surprising him. Is he truly this easy to surprise these days? “It’s not Molly I want to go out for a drink with. It’s you.”

“And why’s that?” Sherlock swings about to ask the question. Faced with Sherlock’s full attention, Lestrade takes a half step back before steeling his backbone. 

“Because... because we’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Because you’re in Mycroft’s pocket, aren’t you?” Sherlock replies. “Tell me, why are you in Mycroft’s pocket when you could have someone like Molly?”

“Wha—Why’s tha—? Sherlock! I am not talking about this with you. Stop insinuating that I’m interested in Molly,” Lestrade splutters.

“But you are, aren’t you?” At Lestrade’s strained look, Sherlock relents. “Fine. But if we’re not going to talk about your sleeping habits, we’re not going to talk about anything that may or may not go on within my bedroom.”

“Fine,” Lestrade says, from between clenched teeth. “We’ll just be two mates going out to a pub after work.”

“And not getting drunk,” Sherlock stipulates. Although it hasn’t been mentioned again, although Sherlock still doesn’t have a full understanding of _why_ it happened, the kiss between him and John is special to him. The associated drunkenness around it isn’t something he wants to share with someone else like Lestrade.

He comes out of his thoughts to realise Lestrade’s staring at him with a peculiar expression on his features. “...Yeah,” he draws out after a while. “I wondered how John’s stag night went between you two.”

“And we will be absolutely not talking about John’s stag night,” Sherlock snaps at him, the final stipulation.

“Geez. Anything you do wanna talk about?” Lestrade mutters as they start walking towards his car.

“Yes, actually,” Sherlock says. There had been something that had confounded him that day, something that had nothing to do with any of the aforementioned topics. “Why is Anderson suddenly back on cases?” 

*

When Sherlock walks into his flat, he tosses his keys onto the table beside the door. The toss evidently has more emphasis than was meant from the way they shoot across the table and onto the floor on the other side.

Lestrade stands behind him. He seems... reluctant to leave.

“You going to be okay here?” he asks.

“What do you think I’m going to do?” Sherlock asks, and it is a stupid question because it invites all sorts of other questions to be asked.

Blessedly, Lestrade doesn’t ask any of them. He just places his hands on his hips and stares at him. “Just so long as you’re alright. And you’ll call, you know, if you need anything? You know you can call me, while... while John’s away?”

“The thought hadn’t explicitly occurred to me, but thank you for stating it outright.” 

“Yes, well, very well then.” Lestrade hovers in the doorway as though he’s not exactly sure what he’s supposed to do now. 

Sherlock closes his eyes. “Yes, Gavin, I will call you if I need anything and I will make sure to stay out of harm’s way.”

He opens his eyes again. Lestrade clears his throat. Why does every other male around him seem to find some aid in doing this? He’s tried it, and it’s a useless action. “It’s _Greg_ ,” Lestrade points out. “And good. Thanks. I’ll keep my phone on.”

“You do that.” Sherlock turns away and Lestrade finally leaves. 

Once the door is shut downstairs and Sherlock is alone in the house, he doesn’t feel the relief he expected to. Why does he insist on pushing other people away, he wonders? It always leaves him so alone.

No doubt Mycroft lay cameras around the place before he bothered to wake Sherlock up this morning. He can’t very well shoot up again here until he finds where those cameras are. 

Well, there’s nothing for it then, Sherlock thinks. Nothing for it but to try to sleep.


	7. Consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You didn't think that was the last we'd heard of the stag night, did you?

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve got a place you can go.”

Once again, Billy Wiggins proves to be a useful fount of knowledge. 

“Can’t do it at home or your parents will see ya?” Billy guesses, as to why Sherlock suddenly needs a place to shoot what he buys from him into his arms.

How young exactly does he think he is? Sherlock wonders, but he says, “Yep. Something like that.” The ‘p’ sound really pops in his mouth, because what Billy guesses is just close enough. Exchange ‘parents’ for ‘nosy brother’ and Billy’s surprisingly dead on.

His gaze lifts up to the decrepit house Billy has brought him to. This will do, he thinks, at least until he can be sure that Mycroft is no longer watching him at his house. 

He also does something else to dissuade Mycroft from watching in at home: gets a girlfriend. 

That wasn’t exactly as planned as he makes it out to be. Janine came to him, having gained his address from Mary at the wedding.

“I liked him,” she told Mary, in her Irish brogue. “I think he could be a good friend.”

He is a good friend to her. But she’s a better friend to him. 

It doesn’t take long for Sherlock to find out her place of work. Once he has that information, the beginning of a plan starts to bloom in his mind, one that is both brilliant and distracting in the best of ways. 

He is just about perfectly balancing these two aspects of his life—as well as keeping Mycroft and Lestrade’s interests at bay—when John and Mary come back from their honeymoon.

Of course, Sherlock pretends to be incredibly busy when John arrives at his doorstep, straight from his honeymoon. 

“Gotten bored of Mary so quickly?” Sherlock asks him without even looking up. He’s wearing goggles, and it’s strangely like the first time they saw one another at Mike’s introduction. 

“No,” John says, with great patience. “Missed you, though.”

He either ignores or is unaware of Sherlock’s body language when he steps into Sherlock’s personal space and gives him a hug. Because somewhere around the wedding, hugs became a standard part of their friendship. Or maybe it was sine the stag night; a step down from the kiss they shared, a step up from the manly nods they used to exchange. A compromise.

Sherlock looks at John carefully for the first time since he’s stepped into his flat and wonders if the other man actually remembers the kiss they shared.

Sherlock can’t seem to forget about it. 

It’s _disturbing_. He’s never had a sexuality to speak of, and there’s nothing in particular that John can give him that he can’t get elsewhere. Nothing apart from sentiment, anyway, and Sherlock’s always thought that a poor excuse to go in for the physical act.

So why the attraction, then? Need has become a very different word for John in Sherlock’s head since the stag night.

“You okay?” John asks, finally noticing the difference in Sherlock’s body language.

“Course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?” Sherlock frowns and looks away from John again. Not like that can help.

“I dunno. You look... stiff.”

Sherlock looks up at John, startled as soon as he said that. Even John can’t seem to believe he said that out loud. He clears his throat loudly, and Sherlock sighs. 

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” John says, and Sherlock can scarcely pretend lack of interest. “About _us_.”

“Oh?” Sherlock asks, and even that sounds too interested in his head. He tries to summon Mycroft’s face in his head, telling him not to get attached, reminding him that John’s now _married_. Because apparently Sherlock can’t remember that all on his own. “What us is there to speak of?”

He sees John mouth most of that silently before he gives up and shakes his head. “God. You frustrate me sometimes. Would you put that Petri dish down?”

Sherlock looks down at his hands and sees he is indeed still holding onto a Petri dish. He can’t think why. There certainly hasn’t been any experimentation around it since John stepped into the room. 

As Sherlock now appears to give his full attention to John, as opposed to pretending not to, John pulls himself up to his full height; still about a foot shorter than Sherlock’s. “We did something on my stag night. You and me. We did something.”

“We did many things, John,” Sherlock says, eyes flashing. “Not the least of which was, I suspect, you spiking our drinks.”

John at least has the decency to flush at that. “Well yes, I did. Which I wouldn’t have if, again, you hadn’t been so infuriatingly _controlled_.”

“I understand from this conversation that I am frustrating and infuriating,” Sherlock cuts in. “Is that what you came in straight from your honeymoon to remind me?”

John looks up at Sherlock with a quelling glare. “No,” he says finally. “We kissed, you and I. We kissed.”

“I am aware,” Sherlock says slowly. “I was there.”

“And so was I,” John says, utterly pointlessly. “And I have some questions about it.”

Sherlock’s brows draw close to his nose. “And here I was to think I was the lesser experienced of the two of us.”

“Would you just...!” John’s hands clench into fists as he stares at the carpet, but Sherlock isn’t concerned he’s going to hit him. Not this time. Many things, but not that. “This is hard enough for me without all your quips. Could you just explain to me, in clear, simple English, what that was?”

Sherlock takes a moment to compose his reply. If John really doesn’t want quips, he won’t want Sherlock’s instinctive response. Yet, if he doesn’t, at least on some level, enjoy Sherlock’s quips, why does he keep coming back?

“John,” Sherlock says, ever so gently. John looks up to meet his gaze once more. There is aching hope in his eyes that Sherlock just doesn’t know what to do with. “If I remember correctly, it was you who kissed me.”

“But you kissed me back.” Hardly more than a whisper with a dearth of intensity behind it. John’s gaze shoots through Sherlock so much so that Sherlock doesn’t think he has the willpower to look away. There was no escaping this conversation. Who would ever have guessed that his John Watson would ever take on a subject like this head on?

“Yes, I did.” Why he had done so is as much as mystery to Sherlock as it is no doubt to John.

Because of that, he does no more than confirm what John has already said. At the same time, he steeps his hands deep in his pockets defensively. 

John only waits with what narrowly passes as patience for about half a minute. “And?” he said, thereafter. “What _was_ that?”

Sherlock flicks a glance away from John and back again. “Dare I say, we could probably blame it on the alcohol?”

“So, it’s _my_ fault,” John explodes.

“I did not say that.”

“But, as you’ve astutely noted, I spiked the drinks!” John’s voice lifts and falls with the words of the sentence. 

“You did, but I never said...” Sherlock starts. It doesn’t matter, John is off and going on a rant. 

“And now, here I am, newly married, and I’ve already gone and lied to her. Because I am a liar, Sherlock. I’ve gone and done this thing, and then I’ve married Mary. And I haven’t told her.”

Sherlock thinks of his own promises made to Mary. One: that he would never do anything that would take John away from him. And two, far more importantly: whatever it took, whatever happened, from now on he would be there for them. His last vow.

He shuts his eyes, overwhelmed for a minute by the weight of the mistake he has made.

“There. There now, you see? This is the gravity of what we’ve done,” John says, correctly estimating the thoughts behind Sherlock’s weary eyes. “So, now, what do we do about it?”

“Simple,” Sherlock says without opening his eyes. Before he opens them again, he turns away from John, knowing he can’t stand the look at the other man as he states the decision he’s made. Was one kiss worth all this, he wonders, as he says, “We cannot see each other now that you are married.”

“What?” The word escapes John, possibly involuntarily. Without visual confirmation, it’s more difficult to tell for certain. The sound of the floorboards creaking under John’s feet announces John’s intention to move towards Sherlock so that the taller man has a moment to guard against it before John takes his shoulder and turns him around. Even so, Sherlock can’t completely mask the flinch. “What did you say?”

“Your hearing is not in any way impaired as far as my extensive knowledge,” Sherlock says without inflection. “You heard what I said the first time. Don’t make me repeat it.”

John pulls his hand from Sherlock’s shoulder as though suddenly burned. Sherlock thinks he understands that feeling. Feelings, again. It always comes down to feelings. 

“You can’t be serious.” There is a part of John that is so aghast by what Sherlock’s saying that he has to make it into a joke. Sherlock hears it in the tremor of his voice. He _almost_ manages to do it.

Sherlock shatters any chance of misunderstanding. “I regret to say, I am entirely serious,” he says, searching for a way to avoid looking at John again. 

He can’t help but be aware of the way John just looks at him, as though Sherlock is the one who kicked the puppy. 

He licks his lips. Sudden anger comes from somewhere within him at the feeling of being trapped in a situation where he has no power over anything. He’s never done very well with such situations, and right now it’s worse than ever. 

“Why?” he snaps. “What would you have us do?”

John’s wounded look doesn’t change, nor does it have any power to soften Sherlock’s sudden rage. Eventually, John seems to see that. The wounded look turns defeated, and his shoulders slump. “I don’t know,” he says. “You’re the smart one. You’re probably right.”

“I usually am,” Sherlock mutters. In this instance, it’s certainly not a thing that he’s proud of. 

“I should...” John takes a deep breath, and releases it. “I should probably go. Straight from my honeymoon, as you said. Should probably go pay attention to the wife.”

“Indeed you should,” Sherlock agrees. 

With one last look, John nods his head and staggers out of the flat. He’s limping again, something he only does when he’s in a bad emotional way. Although he doesn’t admit it aloud, and much as it pains him to be the cause of it yet again, Sherlock is right there with him. 

It’s only after that that he removes John’s chair from where it’s always been in the living room.


	8. Change.

The next time John and Sherlock cross paths, it is completely by chance. Sherlock just happens to be high in a bed next to the child of one of John Watson’s neighbours. It wouldn’t have happened to anyone else.

And yet, Sherlock’s only surprise is the fact he thought it would be Mycroft, not John, to finally track down this den. The game’s up now, he realises as he sits up and addresses his former friend and currently confusing acquaintance.

The look on John’s face is priceless. Sherlock doesn’t know if he only thinks it’s priceless because he’s still high, but he holds onto the sensation all the same. 

“You have got to be kidding,” John groans, before he sends the still groggy son-of-a-neighbour out to the car where presumably Mary is waiting. 

Sherlock looks at him in disgust. The boy really needs to learn how to cover his high more convincingly. Sherlock’s chipper disposition is a _far_ more impressive cover.

“You,” John says. “I leave you alone for a month, and this is what you turn to?”

“Don’t be silly, John,” Sherlock says, and he knows he’s smiling entirely more than the situation warrants. Well, it’s _good_ to see John again, even if it is under these conditions. “I’ve always been like this.”

“Not around me, you haven’t,” John says, around gritted teeth. 

Sherlock looks at him pensively. John no doubt thinks he’s about to come up with something extraordinary when Sherlock opens his mouth to say, “You know, you’ll ruin your teeth if you keep gritting them like that. Do you grit them so much around Mary, or is it just me?”

“Right,” John says, dusting his hands on each other with deliberation. “We’re getting you out of here.”

Before John can put his hands on him to usher him out, Sherlock cries out. “Wait!” he says, suddenly remembering the cover story for why he’s here. “I’m here on a case!”

“What?” John says, plainly not believing him. 

Perhaps this cover story wasn’t as convincing as Sherlock had thought it to be. 

“Don’t call Mycroft,” he says instead. 

“You bloody bet I’m calling Mycroft,” John mutters under his breath.

“I heard that,” Sherlock pointed out.

“I know you heard that. I _meant_ you to hear that.” John’s gritting his teeth again, and Sherlock doesn’t think it’s a good idea to point it out to him again. He forgets to turn off the pensive expression, however, so it’s a shock when John bursts out, “Stop doing that!”

As Sherlock doesn’t know exactly what he’s supposed to do, he flounders back towards familiar territory. “If you call Mycroft, it’s not going to go well. He doesn’t like me when I’m high.”

“To be quite frank,” John says, “ _I_ don’t like you when you’re high. Come on, get up.”

Sherlock gets up, if only to avoid the possibility of John touching him. He’s not sure if John will be touching him in anger right now, and to be honest he doesn’t know whether John touching him in anger or not is a more scary proposition. 

They pick Billy up along the way, which is when Sherlock comes to realise that John has sprained his young friend’s wrist in his effort to locate his neighbour’s son. 

“Was that really necessary?” Sherlock asks, on their way to St. Bath’s hospital. 

It’s only the second time since the fall that Sherlock’s been back here. The first time, he felt reasonably in control of himself. He was visiting John and the stag night was still ahead of them. Now everything’s well and truly out of control, and all Sherlock can take in is the big looming building and imagining himself at the top of it. 

What if it all hadn’t worked as Sherlock and the others had expected? The plan not only included _John_ being fooled. It also relied on all three hit men believing Sherlock was truly dead. That had been the hardest thing to navigate. It was easy to control where John stood. The others had all required specialised distractions for their unique positions. 

Any number of things could have gone wrong. He’d been a fool, he was confronted with, not for the first time, but the first time in this location, under these influences. He’d not only endangered his own life, but he could have cost John his. 

He goes suspiciously silent in the back seat. John looks over at him through the mirror, but Sherlock barely notices. He’s just trying to keep from sinking.

Molly slaps some sense into him. 

“How dare you throw away the beautiful gifts you were born with?” she yells at him, while John and Mary and Billy just stand by watching, doing nothing. 

Sherlock distances himself from the moment by noticing that she is currently not wearing her wedding ring. He was right, he thinks. A little bit later than expected, but still right. Later on he will assimilate the fact that Molly—of all people, _Molly_ —just struck him. For now, he just needs to concentrate on keeping things well enough together until somebody drops him home. Or until he’s excused to take a taxi home. He knows very well how to take care of himself, whatever the rest of them think. 

He’s not paying attention to the conversation where John will get him back to Baker St. So he’s surprised when he’s once again put into a situation where it’s just him and John.

“We can’t keep making a habit of this,” Sherlock murmurs.

“Shut up,” is all John has to say, and then it’s a very quiet ride the rest of the way to Baker St.

John calls Mycroft, as he promised, and Mycroft is standing in the flat waiting for them when Sherlock and John arrive. Not just Mycroft, Sherlock realises. Anderson’s poking his nose everywhere these days. Wasn’t it enough for him to be on active duty in crime cases with Lestrade? Now he’s rifling through Sherlock’s belongings with Mycroft’s consent!

“Calm down, brother mine,” Mycroft says, when he sees the look on Sherlock’s face. 

Sherlock does not calm down. He does not calm down until he is being pulled back from trying to strike out at Mycroft by John’s body pressed against his. Sherlock doesn’t know when _exactly_ it turned over in his mind that Mycroft was the enemy. Nonetheless it has, and Sherlock reacts accordingly. 

Mycroft doesn’t fight back. He’s in intelligence; it’s not his _place_ to fight, not like he made Sherlock do. No, he fights with his words, not his actions. 

Sherlock doesn’t give him another opportunity to speak. 

“Ohhh,” a clear voice says in the back of his head. “Veery good, Sherlock. Let’s see where this goooes.”

“Shut up,” Sherlock hisses, earning himself a strange look from John. It’s the first time he realises that the voice doesn’t come from anywhere else in the room but inside of his head. 

Sherlock doesn’t turn his head, lest he actually _see_ Moriarty standing there. 

John takes control of the situation, and Sherlock lets him because it gets Mycroft out of the flat. Minutes later, Sherlock’s curled up in his chair and John’s standing over him. He’s divided between staring down at Sherlock, and at his chair that is missing from the living room. 

“What was that about?” John asks.

“It was blocking my view to the kitchen,” Sherlock says, deliberately obtuse.

“No, I—I meant that, before. Where you telling Mycroft to shut up?”

“Obviously not,” Sherlock says with a squint. “He wasn’t talking. Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m not trying to be stupid,” John says, showing a lot of patience in those six words. “I’m trying to understand what’s going on with you.”

“What’s going on with me is that I’m on a case.” Sherlock rolls his head over the back of the chair so that he’s looking John in the eye again. “A case that right now, you are interrupting.”

John takes a step back and crosses his arms over his chest. His eyebrows lift. “Oh, I’m interrupting, am I?”

“Yes,” Sherlock mutters, rolling his head back against the head of chair. 

“Oh, so I suppose I have no say in whether you take recreational drugs or not.” John doesn’t wait for Sherlock to actually make a reply to that. “Jesus, Sherlock! _Heroin?_ What were you _thinking?_ ”

“Why?” Sherlock asks, but there’s no fight behind the word at all. “Are you going to hit me like Molly did?”

John sucks in a deep breath, and Sherlock can just imagine all the responses John tests in his head before throwing them out. It takes his former companion quite a while to formulate a response. Sherlock’s almost looking forward to it by the time it arrives.

“No,” John says slowly. Then, “She didn’t hurt you, did she?”

“If you mean to ask whether she broke the skin, I can assure you: no. I am quite intact.”

 _”Liar, liar, pants on fire,”_ Moriarty mocks in the back of his head, but at least Sherlock has the wherewithal to recognise it’s mental and doesn’t react. 

John doesn’t react either. “Are you?” he wonders, even without Moriarty’s ‘help’ and Sherlock raises his gaze to John once again. “Sherlock—” John starts again. There’s a different tone in his voice this time, but Sherlock doesn’t get to find out the rest of what John has to say because that’s when Janine comes out of his bedroom. 

Sherlock has to play along with her, otherwise the part of the plan that isn’t the cover story is going to get blown and—right now—that’s more important. He pushes himself up in his chair as if the high isn’t still running through his body. 

He tries to ignore the—horror?—on John’s face as he sees him cuddling up with another person. What, John’s the only one of them who gets to pick up another partner?

 _A_ partner, Sherlock reminds himself sternly. Sherlock and John were never actually involved. 

He plasters a large smile onto his face for Janine’s benefit before she needs to go off to work. She’s flippant about calling him, which is just as well because it will make up for the fact that he’ll inevitably forget to call her.

“You... have a girlfriend?” John says, once Janine has left, and Sherlock knows that they’ve quite utterly lost that quiet moment between them in which John was about to ask something important.


	9. The Hit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed ONE THING from canon in this chapter, and it’s gone and changed every bloody thing. 
> 
> YOU'RE WELCOME.
> 
> This one's for [ FyreFlyte](http://archiveofourown.org/users/FyreFlyte/pseuds/FyreFlyte), whose lovely long comments always make me smile.

That evening, Sherlock plays the scene over in his head again. 

_“You have a girlfriend?”_

Knowing it’s dangerous, and that each additional repetition adds something that didn’t actually occur, Sherlock does it all the same.

“I hope you didn’t expect me to remain single for the rest of my life, John.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I did.” John shuffles his feet. “What’s so wrong about that?”

Sherlock twitches his head to the side. Eyes closed, he recognises that memory is false and discards it.

“A _girl_ friend, Sherlock?”

Ah. That’s better.

It’s John who has to look away first. Sherlock speaks.

“You heard her wishes. She doesn’t want Mary to know. She hasn’t had a chance to talk to her herself about it yet.”

“ _I_ don’t want to talk about it with Mary!” John cries out. “Sherlock, really, the least you could have done was tell _me_.”

“When was I going to tell you?” Sherlock asks, voice low. “We were no longer speaking. I had to find my entertainment elsewhere.”

“With _Janine_?” John presses, again. 

Sherlock shrugs. “There seemed worse options.”

“Oh, god.” 

John doesn’t have a lot of hair to ruffle, but ruffle it he does as he turns away from Sherlock and thrusts his hand through it. 

Sherlock’s eyelids flicker and he comes back to himself. He’s alone. Again. Neither John or Janine are present. He has no drugs in the house. No crime to solve. He has, in short, nothing. 

His phone rings. 

Sherlock answers without looking at the screen. 

“Good morning, brother. I thought morning was appropriate, given that it is after midnight.”

Sherlock hangs up the phone without speaking into it. Five seconds pass, and then the phone rings again. Sherlock glares at it, then looks up around his room for a camera that he had heretofore missed. There is obviously one given the timing with which Mycroft has called.

The phone goes silent for a while. Then, within another five seconds, it starts to ring again.

Sherlock picks it up this time. “What?” he demands.

“Is that any way to answer the phone?” Mycroft asks, bemused. “I’m sure Mother taught you better phone manners than that. Although, I suppose if she did, she might have let you know it’s rude to hang up on someone in lieu of a ‘hello’.”

“ _Hello_ ,” Sherlock says, tonelessly. “What do you want?”

“I thought you might be feeling lonely. That girlfriend of yours doesn’t seem to be keeping you occupied at all, what with your sneaking out of the house in the wee hours of morning. Where did you go, by the way? John didn’t tell me where he’d found you.”

“Thank god for small mercies,” Sherlock mutters. 

“Yes, well. I thought it was your plan to sever contact with John after the wedding. For the best, of course.”

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Sherlock growls, “but it was.”

“Dear me. You’re not very good at it.”

“Why are you calling?” Sherlock asks, snapping each word off crisply.

“I understand you had a visit from Magnussen today.”

“Why, Mycroft, are you sure we have a line secure enough to dare say his name?” Sherlock asks.

“The line is secure enough,” Mycroft says. He goes silent for a while, as if waiting for Sherlock to speak. After a while, he grows bored of the waiting. “Well?”

“Yes, I did have a visit from Magnussen today,” Sherlock confirms.

Another pause, in which Sherlock deliberately makes him wait. “What did he _say?_ ” Mycroft demands.

“It’s one in the morning,” Sherlock reminds him, as though Mycroft is somehow unaware of the time. 

“And yet you weren’t asleep,” Mycroft returns. 

“Yes, I know,” Sherlock says tersely. “As did you. Now I just need to figure out how.” He gets off the bed as Mycroft says something else, but it isn’t until Mycroft raises his voice that Sherlock pauses in his search for cameras.

“It’s for your own good,” Mycroft says, as soon as he can see Sherlock is paying attention to him again.

“Yes,” Sherlock murmurs. “I’m sure it is.”

“Do you want to end up in rehab again?”

Mycroft dangles the words in front of him silkily, but Sherlock knows a threat when he hears it. 

“That’s where you’re heading if this behaviour of yours continues. This thin story about a case relating to Magnussen will not hold up.”

“Is that so?” He won’t go into rehab again, won’t allow himself to be locked up _anywhere_ again. Not for anybody. 

“I don’t say this to be cruel, Sherlock.” Sherlock thinks he even hears something in his brother’s voice—regret, maybe?—but it is gone too fast for Sherlock to analyse it. “It would quite ruin our mother to have you put away so soon after you came back to us.”

Sherlock doesn’t have the strength of mind to think about Mother as Mycroft says this. He remembers his last time in rehab all too well. He didn’t get along with the other patience there. He was a _disruption._ He wasn’t in the clinic three days before they put him into isolation and a straight jacket ‘for his own benefit’. 

He remembers those things very clearly. It was the same room and straight jacket—replicated as always in his mind palace—that he passed onto Moriarty after the scene at St. Baths. 

“I do so hate to point this out to you at one o’clock in the morning,” Mycroft says softly.

“Yes. You could not have made yourself more clear,” Sherlock says. His voice is chill before he very deliberately pulls his phone away from his ear and hangs up. 

*

After the phone call, Sherlock is determined to expand the so-called ‘thin’ case against Magnusson. So rattled is he from the phone call with Mycroft that it doesn’t occur to Sherlock not to call John. Especially since they saw each other earlier that day. It seems that separation is not going to take. Pity.

John’s phone rings three times before he answers it. 

“Sherlock?” he mutters, still sounding half asleep.

“Oh, sorry. Did I wake you?” 

“You know you bloody well you did. What kind of person would be awake at this time in the morning when they have work to get up for?” John yawns. “What time is it, anyway?”

“Just after one a.m.,” Sherlock answers succinctly. “And to answer your other question, you were often awake at this time of night when you were still living here. Mycroft most certainly is awake, though admittedly his job is less demanding than yours.”

John gives a sigh, catching onto the reason behind this call. “What did Mycroft do now?”

“He says he’s going to put me into rehab,” Sherlock says. He can’t quite hide the horror that this idea brings out in him. Not from John.

For a blessing, John doesn’t say it’s what he needs, or any permutation of that. He just says, “I’m coming over.”

“Would you? Good. Because we’re going to Magnussen’s office from here.”

“Wait a minute. Run that past me again?” John’s waking up now, but not fast enough for Sherlock.

“Do keep up, John. And make sure to say goodbye to your wife before you leave. Wouldn’t want to keep any more secrets from her.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line. Then John says, “Sherlock, she’s not here.”

*

It doesn’t take Sherlock long to hack in and find the GPS location of Mary via her phone. He doesn’t even care that Mycroft might be watching. It’s _Mary_.

By the time John arrives, Sherlock has a target lock on her and has managed to contain his surprise at the fact that she’s in Magnussen’s office. By the time they reach it, Sherlock has five or six theories as to what she could be doing there, at this time of night, but he wants to hear her say it.

Memories of skip codes and her memory being more astute than his on at least one occasion run through his mind as John urges the taxi faster, faster, faster. 

Sherlock’s the only one keeping his cool in the taxi. He thinks even the taxi driver is about to suffer from nerves before he and John step out. 

“Alright,” John says, after Sherlock tells the taxi driver to stop and they get out. “What now?”

He’s fidgeting and only remembering to favour his leg every so often. Sherlock concentrates on not paying attention to him, and instead focusing on the matter at hand. 

“She’s in this building,” Sherlock says, consulting his phone again. 

“I guessed that,” John says impatiently. Then, for the first time in what seems forever, Sherlock watches John actually slow down and _observe_ where they are. “What would she be doing here in the middle of the night?” 

“ _Exactly_ ,” Sherlock says, before striding towards Magnussen’s building. 

Another second later, and Mary would have been a murderer. Later on, Sherlock and John find out adding one more death to her tally wouldn’t have been such a big thing after all.

Sherlock deduces the way Mary must have entered the building and uses that to get up to Magnussen’s office the same way. Sherlock’s faster, of course, lighter on his feet, which is the reason why he gets shot instead of John.

 

 

 

 

 

 

She probably wouldn’t have shot John. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It isn’t the first time Sherlock’s wanted to die. It’s not even the first time recently. 

_”Mummy and Daddy will cry. And The Woman will cry. And John will cry buckets and buckets.”_

Moriarty is a familiar friend. Sherlock buries himself this deep within himself whenever he can’t deal with the pain of the real world. It’s like Moriarty said: No one ever bothers you when you’re dead.

But then Moriarty says something else. “You’re letting him down, Sherlock. John Watson is definitely in danger.”

And though he already knows that Moriarty is only saying that so that Sherlock will stand up and therefore remain for him to torment, Sherlock can’t help but tear himself up off the floor. It’s _John_.

“How long did you _really_ think you were going to stop seeing him?” Moriarty asks mockingly as Sherlock leaves the echo of the room back in rehab, leaving Moriarty behind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John’s at his bedside every time Sherlock opens his eyes. He wakes up twice: once to find him harrying a nurse who, as John puts it, is inserting the IV wrong, twice yelling at Mary to get out of the hospital room. 

John’s not having anyone there who he doesn’t explicitly trust. Even Lestrade with his mobile phone and jokes of taking a video is turned aside. Sherlock doesn’t know if Mycroft even tries to visit. 

It’s funny, in a way. After his fall and the train carriage, this is the only near death situation John has been able to control. And he’s _controlling_ it.

“John,” Sherlock croaks, when he can finally speak. 

“Oh my god. Sherlock.” John pushes aside the medical journal he was reading and stands up. Through bleary eyes, Sherlock can see John refrain from reaching for him. “How are you feeling? Can I get you anything?”

Sherlock can see John already monitoring his vitals and the amount of morphine they’re giving him. He’s in full doctor mode and, right then, it’s very desirable. 

“You stayed with me,” he whispers.

“Of course I... Of course I stayed with you. You were there at the hospital with me when I was buried under a bonfire,” John says gruffly.

Sherlock’s lips twist. So he was, so he was.

“It’s good to see you too, John,” Sherlock utters. 

“Yes, well, it’ll be _very_ good if you never do this to me again,” John says, abruptly stern.

Sherlock’s still smiling vaguely when he fades out again.

*

They let him leave the hospital under John’s care. 

“Well, it was hardly going to be Mycroft, was it?” John asks, when Sherlock first queries him about it. 

When Sherlock finds out that it’s been seven days since he was shot, seven days since the last time John spoke to Mary, Sherlock brings the conversational topic up again.

John’s reading a newspaper at the time. He’s also drinking coffee, because there’s milk in the house again. “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” John says dismissively.

Sherlock understands that. “When would be a more convenient time for you?” 

John glares at Sherlock meaningfully over the top of his newspaper. “You know what I mean.”

“I’ve just suffered a gunshot wound. You’ll forgive me if I’m a bit more vague than usual. I’m probably about the same level as normal people right now.”

That’s blatantly untrue; said purely as an attempt to lighten the mood. It doesn’t work. John inclines his head forward, staying on the topic. “And that’s why I’m not talking to Mary.”

Sherlock lowers his chin and looks at John over his eyebrows. “You can’t not talk to Mary forever,” he points out, logically.

“Want to bet?” John clips out, going back to his newspaper. 

Sherlock takes to leaving notes on John’s newspaper in the morning, instead of speaking to him about it. This is how he shows his respect of John’s wishes to not _talk_ about it. The notes say things like, _Have you spoken to Mary yet?_ and _Maybe you should consider talking to your wife today._

Morning after morning, he watches John crumple those notes up and throw them into the bin. 

It’s getting ridiculous by the time fourteen days have passed. Sherlock doesn’t know when it first seemed like John moved back in again. Probably around the time that he started making jokes in attempts to lighten his mood. They’re both changing, in little ways. Sherlock even replaced the milk one morning. John’s taken a handful of little habits from living with as part of a couple with Mary and adapted them to moving back in with Sherlock.


	10. Mary, Pt 2.

Sherlock starts sending John wake up SMS’s from his bed in the mornings. They’re written along the same lines as the notes had been. It only takes two of these before John cracks it, storming into Sherlock’s room and holding his mobile phone out in front of him.

“Why do you think it’s so important that I talk to Mary?” John demands. “She _shot_ you.”

It’s only a moment later that John realises Sherlock’s not fully clothed. Or, even partially, really.

He stutters a moment while Sherlock watches his rising blush with interest.

“We’ll... continue this conversation in the living room,” John mutters, before beating a hasty escape. 

While pondering John’s interesting reaction, Sherlock takes the whole of his daily morphine dose. He has rather interesting new questions to ask by the time he’s dressed and in the living room, but he manages to stay on topic. 

“Why is it so important I talk to Mary?” The anger has gone out of John’s voice by the time he asks this the second time, so that there’s only resignation as Sherlock finds his way to his chair. 

“Why, John?” Sherlock asks wearily. “Because you love her, so you’re not going to be able to let this go until you talk to her. Since you’re not going to be able to let her go, you may as well have a conversation with her that will answer some of the questions you’ve no doubt been building up behind the argument of ‘she shot Sherlock’.”

Unable to actually get John’s agreement on the subject, Sherlock decides to hatch a plan all of his own. If John won’t pursue answers, then Sherlock will get them for him. 

He leaves a line of clues that lures both Watsons separately to the lie of Leinster Gardens. 

“People live here for years and never see it, but if you are what I think you are, it’ll take you less than a minute.”

John’s gotten here faster. To be fair on Mary, the trail he left her was intended to take longer.

“What exactly we are doing here?” John says, and Sherlock holds his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. 

“Getting answers,” he says quietly, before he resumes his conversation with Mary. “The houses were demolished years ago to make way for the London Underground.”

John must know who Sherlock is speaking to, even though he never says her name, even before Mary steps in through the walkway. John’s shrouded in shadow, yet still visible. Despite all his earlier aversions, now that this conversation is upon them, John can’t make himself look away, can’t make any movement that will change the flow of the scene Sherlock has so artfully wrought. 

This kind of cloak and dagger is quite beyond the skills of the London PD and Sherlock finds himself enthralled by it. A worthy distraction, at last. Well, for at least as long as this lasts.

With all the players finally sharing the same stage, Sherlock begins the culmination of his act. “Mary Morstan was stillborn in October 1972. Her gravestone is in Chiswick Cemetery where – five years ago – you acquired her name and date of birth and thereafter her identity.”

He’s still on the phone to her, talking in a corner where Mary can’t see. Quite right for her to assume that the figure sporting his jacket and ruffled hair is Sherlock, not John. 

She doesn’t even start when Sherlock abandons the phone pretence and walks up behind her. 

“It’s a dummy. I suppose it was a fairly obvious trick.”

“Not _that_ obvious a trick.”

Mary’s facing away from him when she finally realises who is sitting in that chair on the other side of the corridor, but John isn’t. From where he is standing, Sherlock sees with explicit clarity the anger and rage that almost successfully hide the questions and disillusionment. If he hadn’t known that she saved his life when shooting that bullet, Sherlock thinks he might have been angry as well. Instead, he understands Mary Morstan as John isn’t quite ready to do.

They have Mary over after that. Since they arrived in different cars, they agree to return to 221B Baker St in separate cars. 

John gets there first.

By the time that Sherlock gets there shortly after, John has worked himself into a bit of a state.

“What if she doesn’t come?” He’s watching for Mary by the window, even though he swears he’s not.

“She’ll be here when she’s here,” Sherlock advises him. “It’s not like she doesn’t know the address.”

“But after what you just... What _was_ that? I mean, how did you know?”

“How do I know anything, John? I both see and observe.”

“But how...? _I_ should have known,” John seethes, and Sherlock sees another avenue for his anger: at himself. 

“Just wait,” Sherlock says, with unaccountable kindness. “She’ll be here soon.”

When Mary comes upstairs, it’s with a hesitant step over the threshold. 

“John...” she whispers, taking one instinctive step towards him when she sees him.

Both Sherlock and Mary notice it when John takes a step back. Mary lowers her gaze to her feet. It's such an obvious tell of her distress that Sherlock finds himself being frustrated by it. If this woman is everything he thinks she is, she should know better than that.

Unless... She wants John to see how she’s hurting. 

One look at John tells Sherlock that the hurt look has done its bit. John looks conflicted now; concern for his pregnant wife warring with the indignation of having been so duped.

“Mary, please, come in,” Sherlock says. There’s no reason for Mary to get the cold treatment from both of them.

Mary looks towards him gratefully. That moment seems all John needs for the floodgates to open and his words to fall, slowly at first, but then with increasing pace. 

“You. You made me think I was the only one who came into this marriage with a shameful secret... hmm?” The words are obviously a struggle, but John pushes on. “When, in reality, all I did was kiss Sherlock. Once. You, hmm, you lied to me about your name. Your history. In short, everything that ever made me fall in love with you.”

There’s a quick flicker of Mary’s eyes between John and Sherlock as John mentions the kiss. That is the only expression of her surprise at John’s almost certainly accidental admission. Certainly, it is not so important as the bigger issue going on here. But, as Sherlock watches the Watsons in their first big marital dispute, Sherlock wonders... did she already know?

With each stark statement, John grows more and more effusive until Sherlock can’t look bring himself to away. It’s morbid, it’s grotesque. He can see Mary being torn apart piece by piece but, as much as he’s come to care about her—as much as he himself has already accepted her case—he can’t bring himself to stop John. John needs to say these things, to get them out. 

Abruptly, he turns away from the woman who is his wife and points to a chair that is neither his nor Sherlock’s.

“This is where you sit and talk, and this is where we sit and listen. Then we decide if we want you or not.”

It’s the final gauntlet, and it is a bitter pill to swallow. Knowing his own past, Sherlock can understand why she kept certain parts of hers from John, from both of them. In that moment, Sherlock is sure he feels more empathy toward Mary than John does.

Still, he must back John in this. It is what he’s compelled to do. With his hands clasped behind his back, he steps aside so that Mary has room to move past him, into the chair that John has indicated. After a moment’s search of John’s gaze—presumably to see if there is anything left inside of her loving husband—Mary sits down. 

She asks Sherlock how much he has already figured out. He sets examples of what he himself has seen to assess she’s both an intelligence officer, and also on the run. Mary confirms this, then tells them why she wants Magnussen dead.

Through it all, John is like a stone pillar. Sherlock notices very early on the way Mary explains to him her story, with the occasional glance across to John, as if to make sure he’s still listening. John has the slitted-eyed look of someone who has been given too much information too fast and doesn’t know what to do with it all before Mary even gives him a USB with the full details of her past. 

He pockets it, and that’s the last Sherlock sees of it. 

It is left to Sherlock, in the end, to see Mary out. At the bottom of the stairs, she turns to face him. With an incredible display of personal resolve, she asks, “Do you think he’s going to forgive me?”

Sherlock already considered this answer in advance, so he doesn’t make her wait to hear the answer. “Give him enough time, and he’ll have to.”

This is an opinion based not just on John’s essential nature, but also on the fact that Mary is still carrying his baby. 

As if her own thoughts have crossed that way, Mary lifts a hand unconsciously to her belly. “I want to thank you,” she said. “For making him see me today.”

Sherlock inclines his head, and replies with all seriousness, “It’s what you did for me after I faked my death for two years.”

The two of them share a moment of individuals with too much in common. 

“I want to thank _you_ ,” Sherlock returns.

“What for?” Mary asks, in perfect surprise. 

“For not killing me when you had the chance.”

“Oh.” Mary rolls her eyes at this, and Sherlock once again remembers what it is to so enjoy her company. “If John wasn’t going to forgive me for this, I _knew_ he wouldn’t forgive me for that.”

“All the same,” Sherlock says dryly. “Thanks.”

“It’s no problem.” Even though it’s tinged with sadness, she still manages to smile. “Besides. I just happen to like you too, you know.”

With hands clasped at his back once more, Sherlock stands patiently watching her go. 

She hesitates, then looks back at him once more. “I don’t mind that the two of you kissed. I know that John sees it as a shameful secret, but I never would have made him feel ashamed for it.”

Sherlock doesn’t have an answer for that one. He inclines his head once more, his throat too full for words to speak.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... in canon... we are given a couple of months around this point where we know John and Mary don’t speak till Christmas. 
> 
> If you don't think I'll be taking advantage of that here, you'll be wrong. 
> 
> Mary, however, is the best female character I've seen Moffat write, and I love her, and if you don't think she'll stay present as part of the narrative, you'll be wrong.
> 
> So, in short, read on.... ;)

It’s Mary’s parting words that give Sherlock impetus to decide to do something very daring. That night, he paces in his room long enough to end up with more than one text from Mycroft along the lines of, _Do you need someone there to take care of you?_

Sherlock’s responses aren’t phrased anywhere near so politely. 

He assumes that Mycroft sees it the minute that Sherlock steps out of his room and into John’s without knocking. He doesn’t care. 

John does, though.

“Oi!” He stares at Sherlock, appalled. Sherlock realises that, for all of the other faux pas he’s committed during the times they’ve lived together, he has never before entered John’s room before knocking.

“Turnabout’s fair play,” Sherlock says, referencing John’s storming into his room due to the texts, as though that was what he meant to do all along.

“That’s different.” John’s eyes don’t leave him as Sherlock closes the door. As he comes to sit on the end of John’s bed, John pushes himself up. “What’s wrong?” he asks, suddenly alert.

“I’m going to tell you the things I did while I was away from you,” Sherlock says. “So it’s never me sitting in that chair, deciding if you want me.”

John goes very still at this point, but he accepts Sherlock’s words with the barest movement of his head. Sherlock looks down at John’s bedspread to speak. He’s pretty sure that John doesn’t love him. He’s certainly given the other man no reason to engender such a strong attachment towards him. But even if their friendship is only one based on like, it’s as Mary said: he doesn’t want to see it the moment when John no longer likes him.

“It wasn’t all torture and being saved by Mycroft,” Sherlock starts. “I hope you can appreciate I’m more adept than that.”

“Of course I can,” John says. Without even looking at him, Sherlock can tell he’s started to brace himself by the movement of the sheets on the bed. Sherlock wished he had something he could brace himself against.

“Excellent. Then I trust it will come as no surprise to you to hear... I killed. More than once. More than a dozen times.” To be truthful, Sherlock has kept an exact number of the people he killed in his mind. He just doesn’t want to share that number with John. “I won’t tell you how I killed them. It’s enough to know that they died. I played men against one another, expertly, as you might expect. They then killed one another so I didn’t have to. I came to think of it as a dance. A gritty and bloody dance.”

Sherlock’s only glosses over moments that even John—with his history as an army doctor—can’t quite stomach. He’s shaking long before he gets to the end of this rendition and has no idea that the reason John encourages him to gloss over certain sections isn’t because of what he’s saying, but because of what it’s doing to him to say those things. 

“I just need...” Sherlock is a deep croak, barely a voice at this point. He’s pushing himself through these two more sentences like it’s just another trial to endure. “I just need more morphine. I’m in quite a lot of pain.” They’re at the end of it. Flashes of what John’s expression must be like rush before his eyes, but he still hasn’t found the courage to lift his eyes.

John is a doctor. With Sherlock in such a state in front of him, he knows what he’s looking at. “Sherlock.” He’s taken a deep breath in and says in wonder, “Oh god, Sherlock. You’ve got PTSD...” 

“Don’t be dramatic,” Sherlock returns on instinct. John isn’t the one out of the two of them who’s historically been the drama queen. Although, these days, John’s giving him quite a run for his money.

John can’t take offense. There’s not enough heat or fight in Sherlock’s tone to take offense at, more remembered words without the spirit to go behind them. “Why didn’t you come to me?” 

That’s when Sherlock lifts his gaze to John. John’s words cut off midsentence at the hollowed out husk staring back at him from those vivid blue eyes. Sherlock looks away, unable to handle the shocked look on John’s face and thinking it’s disgust at the things Sherlock’s told him that has caused it. 

This time, he doesn’t spout anything about cases John’s interrupting. “You had a life...” Sherlock says simply.

“And after all that effort you went to bring me back into yours again...” John sucks a breath in, but he says quite calmly, “Does anyone know? Molly?”

Sherlock flinches at the sound of Molly’s name, something John immediately picks up on. 

“What’s that?”

“Please. I don’t want to talk about Molly,” Sherlock tells him, doing his best not to cringe away.

Although it’s been two weeks since their conversation that was aborted by Janine, John remembers it. God bless him.

“Because she hit you,” John says. Another thought strikes him. “Oh, Sherlock. I didn’t know.”

And just like that, they are talking about the not inconsequential number of times John struck Sherlock on his auspicious return. Sherlock can’t quite summon the words to tell him it’s alright. Because it’s not. And now John not only knows it, but knows why. The two men observe a moment of silence as each of them come to terms with this new information into their relationship.

“You still should have told me,” John says. “You still should have found _some way_ of letting me know. But I shouldn’t have... I never should have...” John shakes his head, unable to come up with words for the three times he’d hit Sherlock; the three times Sherlock hadn’t even attempted to defend or fight back against him.

Still, Sherlock says nothing; just lets John make his apologies until the point that he will be alright with what has passed. Then, at least one of them will be.

“Sherlock. I’m such a...” Whatever John was or is, he doesn’t decide to dwell on it. Instead, Sherlock hears a deep, slow breath in and out. Sherlock wishes it was that easy to calm himself these days. He’s still staring at his hands, unable to say a word. “Are you taking anything for it?”

The old Sherlock would have said something smart, something like, ‘How could I be taking something for it? You only just diagnosed me.’ 

But this new Sherlock doesn’t say anything. He’s already said enough—more than enough. Only now does he accept the gravity from which he’s been hiding. All those cases, useless. John’s stag night, the wedding preparations, useless, useless, _useless._ He doesn’t know how he’s going to stand and face the next day, or the one after, or the one after that. Even if he is _Sherlock Holmes_.

John see the answer to his question shining in Sherlock’s battered gaze anyway. “No. Of course you’re not.” Then the expression he pulls is exasperated. “Except the morphine. _And_ the heroin.”

The only two things that have made any day since coming back to London bearable. Well, the only thing other than John’s company. He supposes he can get used to having a bit more of that now. But without those two base assistants... 

At the threat of that being monitored by someone who actually lives in the house--rather than someone who merely watches in—Sherlock finally speaks up. “John...” 

John holds a hand up to forestall any arguments Sherlock might make. “Those are both particularly addictive drugs, and you, Sherlock, have a history of addiction. No, don’t you roll your eyes at me. This is serious.”

Serious, it might be, but it is also achingly familiar. At that acknowledgement, Sherlock actually holds John’s gaze for more than a bunch of seconds, manages a tiny smile that almost reaches his eyes. 

John’s face softens at the sight of it. “Sherlock. You’re going to be okay. I’m going to make sure of it.”

He’s never had anyone step in to make sure he’ll be okay before. Sure, throw him into rehab for a couple of months before pulling him out again. But, somehow, John’s words have a different ring to them. Sherlock doesn’t know what to say to that. Fortunately, John knows him well enough that he doesn’t expect an answer. He only expects a resolution to the problem of the moment.

“So. Are you going to be staying in here all night, or...?”

Sherlock’s blue eyes widen and dilate as John’s words effectively summon memories he’s pulled up and discarded as false in the past. Very near to sounding like an invitation. 

Evidently, John hears the way this could be taken too. “Er, I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t fret, John,” Sherlock says, getting himself under control very quickly given the nature of the discussion they’ve just finished having. Right now, he’s thankful of John’s meagre observation skills. “I wouldn’t make you confront your aversion to homoerotic inclinations,” he says. 

Sherlock slips out of John’s bedroom before John quite knows what to say.

*

That Sherlock doesn’t immediately react by saying PTSD is just an excuse weak people use for doing nothing with their lives surprises him. That is exactly what he’s thought of the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder until that very conversation last night. Now, though, having been through some sincerely traumatic experiences of his own, he’s almost ready to start reconsidering the issue. 

The expression on John’s face when he told him was gentle. It wasn’t pitying, so much as enlightening. He didn’t look like he was giving Sherlock an excuse to stop functioning, so much as giving Sherlock a diagnostic. 

Maybe that is the reason why his mind palace has been playing up. Maybe it’s just his way of processing post traumatic stress. 

It doesn’t give him a rest just because John’s acknowledged there’s a problem. 

John is asleep and his phone is free of interfering text messages from Mycroft, but his brain is still awake and active. It’s The Woman, tonight, Irene instead of Moriarty. That might have been better, had she been what he craved.

Yet she’s a response to the type of craving he’s suffering, and Sherlock’s honest enough with himself to know that, even as he knows it will never come to any fruition.

“Relax...” says The Woman, and Sherlock doesn’t have the will to put his walls back up tonight. Together they sink into her room off the staircase in which her lighter BDSM tools are kept. 

“I don’t think we need any of these tonight,” she whispers in his ear from behind him. “Just sensual touch. Close your eyes... and imagine.”

Sherlock does exactly that and then is startled as The Woman’s slender hand give way to the thicker-set fingers of the doctor in the room across the hall. 

“John...” he whispers. 

“Shh,” says a voice that Sherlock cannot decipher as male or female. 

He tries to push himself up then, just to see, but the same hand restrains him. Despite himself, Sherlock feels his panic immediately spike. “I... I can’t,” he husks. He can’t fight against John, but he lay here restrained. If it was really John, he’d know that. 

With heart pounding in his throat, Sherlock makes himself take control of the situation. His strong arms bunch as he pushes himself off the massage table Irene found for him. He can’t breathe, can’t quite find his bearings well enough to push his panic down. 

“Now, this is not quite so serious as when you were shot.” Despite their altercation, it's still Molly’s face that swims in his awareness and, like when he was shot, Sherlock is able to pay attention to her words. “You’re having a panic attack. What are the symptoms?”

“Shortness of breath, sweats, in some people there is a feeling of claustrophobia,” Sherlock rattles off, though it does nothing to calm him. 

“What do you need to do to overcome this?” Molly asks.

“Space,” Sherlock manages to get out. “Deep breaths. A centre of focus.”

Again, Redbeard comes to the fore of his mind. His fingers dig deep into the fur of the long dead childhood dog. Sherlock can feel tears streaming uncontrolled down both cheeks. Redbeard swings his head around to lick them from his face. Sherlock begins to feel his breathing calm down. He hugs the dog until his face is pressed into his fur. The scent of the dog’s body is familiar, blocking everything else out...

When Sherlock wakes up at six a.m., his face is buried in a pillow that’s wet with his tears.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In six hours, it will be one week since the first chapter of this serial was posted.
> 
> Guh, how is that even...?!
> 
> Once again, I want to thank all of you beautiful commenters for keeping my inbox full and motivating me to continue on such a tight schedule. This is officially my longest piece of fic I've written for this fandom, and my favourite thus far.

First thing in the morning, John takes Sherlock to work for a psychiatric evaluation. John is there in the room with him the whole time, putting his morning appointments on hold or having the receptionist on staff rebooking them entirely. Both men know John being there’s not to make sure Sherlock goes, but for support. Sherlock’s just more important today. The silent support is all Sherlock needs.

He’s not good at opening up, and he certainly doesn’t go into the detail he went to with John the previous evening, but he gives enough to the psychiatrist that PTSD is diagnosed officially, and a strategy for getting on top of it is recommended. 

John makes some unveiled reminders about doctor-patient confidentiality not being waved simply because Sherlock is something of a celebrity. Sherlock imagines his own strict talking to on the count of actually _sticking to_ this recommended strategy will commence once they are alone in private.

He imagines very, very right. It starts as soon as they get home. 

“Time for your pills,” John says. 

Sherlock accepts the glass of water John’s gathered to take them with.

“Now,” John asks, calm and reasonable. “Where have you been keeping your drugs?”

As Sherlock attempts to deflect, John cuts him off.

“None of these drugs go well with unprescribed medication. Now, I’ll ask again. Where are they?”

“The morphine was prescribed for my gunshot wound,” Sherlock reminds him, angling for sympathy.

“We picked up alternative pain medication on the way home. Which, I plainly doubt went unobserved by you. Your hiding place, Sherlock.” John’s mouth is a thin line of disapproval. In some ways, this is worse than Mycroft. Sherlock actually cares what John thinks. 

“In the bathroom,” Sherlock says. “For the last of the morphine. I don’t have heroine in the house.”

John looks at Sherlock for a moment, trying to decide whether he should believe him. He should, Sherlock thinks, because he’s not lying. After half a minute’s evaluation, John hands proscribed medication and water glass to Sherlock and relieves the morphine from their shared bathroom. 

He’s got a plastic bag full of general rubbish and morphine ready to take outside when he pauses in front of Sherlock.

“I want to see you take that medication, Sherlock,” he says. “This isn’t just going to get better on its own.”

“So you keep saying,” Sherlock utters. He’s already past the idea of things getting better. 

All the same, he takes the pills, mostly to stop John whining. When it’s done, John watches him a moment to make sure. Sherlock could have tucked them in the corner of his mouth and John wouldn’t know with such a cursory glance. It’s good that he didn’t.

With a formal nod, John announces he’s going downstairs to put the bins out but he’ll be right back up if Sherlock needs him. 

Sherlock paces slowly in his living room. He doesn’t expect the drugs to work quickly, and they don’t. There are still a number of days when being left alone in his room causes withdrawals and shakes that lead him down into his sabotaged mind palace, a mind palace that is still preferable to the alternative outside. 

“How long do you think you can do this?” Moriarty asks him. Sherlock doesn’t need to go all the way down to the dungeon-like room. He wonders what it says about his mental state that this is where he’s chosen to wait. “You know, you could just go out and find him. What is his name again? Bii-lly.” Moriarty draws the name out as though testing its sounds. He sways his head from side to side like a snake. “No one need ever know.”

“ _John_ would know,” Sherlock says. 

“Ah, yes. Can’t have John knowing.” A sly smile sneaks around Moriarty’s features. “But we are so much smarter than John...”

Sherlock stares stone faced at the padded wall behind Moriarty, ever conscious that he can feel the sweat on his face. 

“We could do it,” Moriarty tempts. “Hide it in a way that would have even John scratching his head.”

Sherlock wishes he was the one bound and chained to the wall. 

_“Sherlock,”_ says a familiar and older voice from just outside the room. _“Do you need someone there to take care of you?”_

“Oooh,” says Moriarty. “Big Brother’s watching now.”

Mornings invariably start with Sherlock exchanging sweat slicked skin for cooling water in the first shower of the morning. He’s embarrassed by his body’s weakness, and does his best to hide his suffering from John.

However, John, the doctor, is more astute than Sherlock gives him credit for. Sherlock sees the shorter man gazing at him across the kitchen table each morning. 

“I’m not a guinea pig from your lab,” Sherlock grouses.

“I don’t have a lab,” John replies, annoying cheerful in the morning. 

“Well I’m still not your guinea pig,” Sherlock says.

“Never said that you were.”

But it’s increasingly obvious to Sherlock that John has taken him on as a cause, one that distracts him from thinking about his errant wife. Sherlock doesn’t have to wonder, of course. There are all these hours in the day when John is at work and assumes Lestrade’s got him helping out on a case. Some of the time, that’s actually true. 

Other times, Sherlock’s with Mary. 

“You really don’t have to do this,” Mary says, when he first starts visiting, but he can tell that she’s pleasantly surprised that this... friendship between them is not fleeting.

“How’s John?” She always asks that. After a while, Sherlock starts their visits with small stories to do with John. Nothing that would be an invasion of what John considers his privacy. Just silly stories, really.

“Does he talk about me?” This question comes less often, but still reliable. And Sherlock finds out what it really is to care about someone who’s not John every time he has to answer that.

“No. Not yet. I’m sorry, Mary.”

“That’s okay.” Mary masks wiping away tears by pretending to move hair from in front of her face, but Sherlock’s not fooled. He’s not even convinced that Mary thinks he’s fooled. But, by silent agreement, the two of them allow these moments to pass without comment.

“So. What’s going on with you?” Mary asks him, when it’s plain that none of her questions about John are going to bring her happiness. Sherlock doesn’t take offense to this. It’s entirely correct that Mary’s first consideration should be her husband.

“I think that John’s using my PTSD and getting clean as a distraction.” That he manages to not only claim PTSD but admit the diagnosis out loud speaks loudly for how far he’s come, and doesn’t happen until about half a dozen quiet visits between them. 

“From... me,” Mary says. It’s not exactly a question.

“Yes,” Sherlock, confirms anyway.

“I talked to Janine the other day.” Mary turns her head so she’s not quite facing him as he admits this. Sherlock has to admit, he’s quite curious as to where this comment is going. Janine lost her usefulness to him when he found another way into Magnussen’s office, and so Sherlock lost his interest in her. He hasn’t thought of her in several weeks. “She told me you two were dating.”

Ah, yes. He knew he forgot something before they stopped talking. Apparently that thing was ‘break up’. He’d _told_ Janine he wasn’t very good at relationships. 

Mary turn her head back to face him again while Sherlock’s in his thoughts. “She said that the last time she saw you was just before John moved back in.”

Sherlock’s always known Mary’s far more astute than the common person. 

“I am more interested in John,” Sherlock says, answering Mary’s unspoken question. “He doesn’t know. He’s not particularly observant of these things. Were he to know the extent of my feelings, he’d hardly thank me for them.”

“Well,” Mary says, looking a tad big shell-shocked. “That was breath-takingly honest.”

“I would never lie to you, Mary,” Sherlock says. It’s an extension on his already given vow, really. “Especially not about John.”

“I see that now.” Mary seems to admire it, even as she’s taken aback by the sincerity of his loyalty.

“Does it make you uncomfortable?” Sherlock only thinks of that now. He wouldn’t much like if any discomfort over this revelation caused a rift between the two of them.

“Yes,” Mary answers, with equal honesty. “And, no.” Mary looks away from Sherlock, and then back again. “I knew, when I met him, that he was grieving for more than the best friend he said he’d lost.” Mary takes a deep breath, obviously contemplating something, then lets both breath and words out. “I think, if John were to find out your feelings, it would not go so poorly as you think.”

Sherlock knows that Mary’s gazing at him as he processes this. That doesn’t help the naked emotions crossing his face. 

“Mary...” Sherlock starts.

“Don’t.” She holds a hand up to forestall him. “Don’t make any more vows. You made your last already, remember?”

*

John’s already home when Sherlock comes back again. He’s evaluating the kitchen sink and the dishes that have been left there. Sherlock supposes it must be near dinner time. “What did you get up to today, then, hmm? Did Lestrade have you running all around Scotland Yard?” 

“Not funny,” Sherlock replies, despite lingering nearby the kitchen.

“Sorry.” John looks confused as to Sherlock’s dismissive nature. “Hard case, then?”

“Wasn’t actually a case.” One step takes him to the fridge. With the door open and his head inside it, he knows John can’t see his face. Sherlock’s not above taking advantage of that.

“Not a case, hey?” John asks slowly. He turns away from the dishes and begins to approach the other man. “What had you out all day, then?”

Though John’s voice is very careful as he asks this, Sherlock slams shut the door of the fridge. “Not falling off the wagon, if that’s what you think,” he says.

“Okay!” John holds his hands up. “That’s good to hear. How are you feeling, then?”

Sherlock’s about to open his mouth, when he realises that his mind palace isn’t creeping up over the edges of his awareness. A quick check shows that it is still there—thank god!—but it doesn’t try to follow him into his living room when he comes back to focus on John. Sherlock can’t actually remember the last time that had happened. The realisation pauses him for a moment.

“I’m feeling... Good.” Sherlock tests the word out. 

“That’s a good start,” John says. His smile is warm as he looks on Sherlock.

“Yes,” Sherlock murmurs, holding John’s gaze. 

The look goes on just a little too long, and Sherlock’s the first to break eye contact. He refuses to clear his throat, which they all know by now is just a clear sign of discomfort. He’s not uncomfortable. He just doesn’t want to make _John_ uncomfortable. 

So he gets up, and starts towards his chair and computer.


	13. All of Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere along the line, I’ve listened to this song and it’s struck me as being the theme song for Sherlock/John in this fic:  
>    
> [ John ~~Watson~~ Legend – All of Me.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518WB1IcjPI)
> 
> Now I'm totally compiling a playlist. Contributions welcome in the comments :D

John’s not content to let things rest like that. If Sherlock had have thought about it, he would have known that escape from a room into another with no wall between was really no escape at all. Thus, as Sherlock leaves the kitchen for their living room, John follows him out. 

“Sherlock.”

The taller man freezes, before turning back to John’s call expectantly.

John seems about to take a step forward, then reconsiders it. “What did you mean, that time, about not confronting me with my... aversion to... homoerotic inclinations?” The question comes out staggered, but it’s clear that he’s thought about it since it was said, enough to make him press the question.

Sherlock considers the potential outcomes to pursuing this conversation to its logical conclusion. No good can come out of it, he is quite sure of that. Which is the reason he finished the conversation before it could get to a proper start the last time. Yet, with John’s gaze steadily upon him, it is actually Mary’s words that come to him. 

_“I knew, when I met him, that he was grieving for more than the best friend he said he’d lost.”_

“Quite simple.” If John notices that Sherlock’s words are slower to come out than usual, he doesn’t remark upon it. With each word, Sherlock watches his dear friend very carefully. “Ever since our first encounters, you have been made uncomfortable by the insinuation that anyone might see you as part of a gay couple, much less in a relationship with _me_. There are two possible reasons for this: one, you don’t want to be associated with me, which is...”

John snorts at this theory before Sherlock can properly discount it. The sound encourages Sherlock to incline his head and speak further. 

“Which is, as I was going to say, patently ridiculous given the situations you and I have found ourselves in, time and again. That only leaves one other option.”

“And...” John licks his lips. “What’s that?”

Sherlock blinks again. He would have thought this much obvious. Why is John trying to make him state it? 

“The second possible reason, of course, is your aforementioned aversions,” Sherlock says, as simply as he can bring himself to. Once again, he turns his head aside; a blatant attempt to bring an end to the conversation.

“Sherlock, I’ve been thinking—”

That’s as far as John gets; as far as Sherlock lets him get.

“Furthermore,” Sherlock interrupts, more loudly than is his usual, “on that occasion when it came up, you had just been very kind to me on a matter very personal to me. I would not return that kindness by making you deliberately uncomfortable immediately after.”

“Uh, thank you,” John says. “For that.”

“You’re welcome.” With a nod of his head, Sherlock states that this is the end of the conversation as far as he’s concerned. 

“Um, Sherlock? That’s not all I was going to say.”

Sherlock’s scared, because he’s convinced himself of the logic of too many reasons why things will never work romantically between himself and John Watson. Those reasons include but are not limited to the short list he has just relayed back to John. John should know these things already.

Then again, Sherlock should know he better than to think he allows himself the luxury of ‘scared’. He wasn’t scared when Daddy told him Redbeard was sick and they had to put him down. He wasn’t scared when they released him from rehab and he had to learn how to function in the real world again. He wasn’t scared when he first started to recognise his feelings for John. He wasn’t scared when he pitched himself off the St. Baths hospital.

Sherlock’s scared.

“Please, John. Let’s not say anything one or the other of us is going to regret.” Sherlock wishes he had something for his hands to fiddle with. His laptop is the nearest thing to his chair, so he opens it on his lap as though he’s got something terribly important to look up. He’s got a history of looking busy when in actual fact he’s only avoiding boring conversations.

This conversation is the furthest thing from boring, but he can’t stand to let himself have it.

“Er, quite right,” says John. Sherlock dares himself a look at the older man for the barest second. John looks lost, as though he had known the direction he’d been heading, only to have it quite suddenly switched on him. “Alright, then. Tea? Coffee?”

“Coffee, I think,” says Sherlock. He’s sure he has something to look up on this stupid laptop, he just can’t for the life of him figure out what. 

“Do we have milk?” As John’s already retreated as far back as the kitchen to look in the fridge, Sherlock can only assume not. 

“Probably not. My fault, I suppose.”

“I suppose so,” John mutters under his breath. Sherlock’s gaze stays trained on John only until John looks up and out of the fridge again. Then Sherlock’s gaze trains back to the laptop as though that’s where they’ve been the whole time. 

“Right. So. I guess I’ll go out to get some more.” John waits a couple of seconds for a reply, any reply. 

Sherlock just stares at his computer screen. With all of his exemplary intelligence, he can’t think up one single thing to say that’s appropriate.

Even John doesn’t wait forever. With a loud breath, John exits the kitchen to grab his coat off the rack and leaves without a reassuring parting comment as has become his want.

Less than fifteen minutes later, but still before John’s back, Sherlock receives a phone message.

_Smooth, little brother. Very smooth._

Sherlock narrowly refrains from shattering his phone against a wall. 

*

The conversation doesn’t get brought up again after John returns home with milk and something for dinner, but the fact of John’s care taking continues. 

“If I have to see a counsellor for my PTSD, you need to too,” John tells him the next day, and the premise seems good in theory, at least until John makes him an appointment.

George is the name of the therapist Sherlock starts to see. George and John’s therapist, Ella, work in the same building. For the first session with George, he and Sherlock sit staring at each in silence other for forty minutes. That’s after George trying and failing for ten minutes to get Sherlock to start talking. 

At the 48 minute mark, George makes a show of looking at his watch. “You know,” he says. “My fee is deducted from your account whether or not you choose to talk. I can’t think why you’d choose to make this appointment if you’re not going to do anything with it.”

John. _John_ is the reason he made this appointment. Sherlock opens his mouth to speak.

“I have seen things...” he starts in a low voice, without looking at George once. 

They go fifteen minutes over time before George brings himself to put a stop to Sherlock’s sudden flow of words. John is sitting in the waiting area, taping the watch on his wrist lightly when George sees him out.

“I thought we arranged appointments for the same time,” John says, as they fall into step with one another. 

Sometimes John does things, like make identical appointments for the two of them in the same building. It feels like things couples do; messed up couples who share psychological scaring. Sherlock wonders if John is desperate enough for this kind of companionship now that Mary’s not in his immediate picture that he’s making a surrogate of it with Sherlock. 

Mary—cruel and captivating woman—laughs at him when he tells her he’s having counselling appointments. 

“ _You?_ ” she asks.

“What’s wrong with me seeing a therapist?” Sherlock asks.

Mary goes wide eyed. “Oh, nothing,” she says. Sherlock doesn’t know why. She clearly doesn’t mean it. Eventually, though, he does get it out of her. “It’s just... the idea of you sitting on a chair in front of someone, and opening up to them. It doesn’t seem very much like you.”

And she peers at him, then, as though she might have somehow pegged him wrong.

“Don’t worry,” he tells her, with a roll of his eyes. “I’m still me.”

“I’m jolly well glad,” Mary says. “Otherwise, who would look after John?”

For several weeks, there are no threats or attacks on Sherlock’s person, no kidnappings of John, and, in general, the first genuine quiet period Sherlock thinks he has ever known. John requests that, since it’s quiet anyway, Sherlock doesn’t go out of his way to piss off any mastermind villains. 

“Not right now,” John says. “I really don’t think I could handle you having to jump off another building again.” 

“Oh, please,” Sherlock replies. “Like I would pull the same trick twice.”

This doesn’t have the effect of reassuring John like Sherlock thought it would.

“Just promise me.” There’s white around John’s mouth, like when he’s really stressed or really serious about something.

And, because it’s John asking, Sherlock promises.

This leads to too many hours spent in Lestrade’s stuffy office with mountains of paperwork. The whole thing’s too mind-numbingly boring for words, and Sherlock can’t believe he had the stupidity to agree to it.

“What do you expect, Sherlock?” Lestrade asks, at the end of one of Sherlock’s sighs that seems to have gone on for a solid ten minutes. “This is what paperwork is.”

“Can’t it be, I don’t know... More interesting?” Sherlock demands.

“I don’t know what you expect paperwork to be...” says Lestrade.

“Cases. Cases on paper. Something to solve.”

Lestrade considers this for a while, then comes back to Sherlock. “Alright,” he says. “I think I’ve got something for you.” He imparts to Sherlock’s keeping a folder of missing persons reports. “This should keep you busy for a while,” he mutters, before getting back to his own work.

The file keeps him busy for four hours. By the end of the week, he has located 17 missing persons. Unfortunately, they are all found dead.

Nevertheless, it is the best time Sherlock has spent behind a desk. 

“I need more,” Sherlock says.

“What you need,” says a very exasperated Lestrade, “is to go home. Hasn’t John been there a bit, lately?” He’s at the end of a solid week with Sherlock, and is approaching his wits’ end. Half the station is on the verge of quitting, and the higher ups are asking how it’s possible that more cases have been solved in the last week than the entire year. 

“Yes,” Sherlock says, wondering what this has to do with anything.

Lestrade rubs his brow between forefinger and thumb. “Would it hurt you to spend some time with him instead?” he asks.

Sherlock frowns. “Why? What has he been saying?”

“Nothing!” Lestrade’s eyebrows raise, then lower. “Is there something he should have said?”

“Never mind. Nothing. Pretend I didn’t say a word. I’d best head home.” Sherlock grabs his jacket off the back of the desk chair he’s been working from. It swirls around him before settling on his shoulders. 

Lestrade’s giving him a very strange look by the time Sherlock leaves his office.

Molly’s the other person lucky enough to be hounded by Sherlock. What’s the worst trouble he can get into in a morgue, he asks himself after all. Besides, it’s a clean and quiet space where Sherlock can practice his experiments without John getting annoyed at things like human brains sitting in the freezer.

“Sherlock, I’d like to say I’m sorry.” Molly stutters this out after several days of strangeness between them. Her strangeness, not his.

Sherlock looks up at her, removes his plastic goggles and squints in question. 

“I spoke to John shortly after you visited the first time. He told me what you’d said, about...” Molly looks like this is horrifying for her, and Sherlock is sure he already knows what she’s about to say, but she forces herself through it anyway. “I’d like you to know that I think what you did in that drug den was _stupid_ , even if it was for a case. But I’m... I’m sorry for hitting you like that.”

“No apologies necessary,” Sherlock says, replacing his goggles and getting back to his work. 

But all he can see is John. John, John, John. It always comes back to John.


	14. Say Something

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still building my very own soundtrack to this fic. This chapter is brought to you by [ A Great Big World - Say Something](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVgixOjGhVU). 
> 
> And, you may have noticed this fic is now part of a series 'A History of Addiction'. For anyone who didn’t see it, yesterday’s update was for a short fic in the same universe, but from Lestrade’s point of view: [ Not Enough](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1168076).

George, the counsellor, encourages Sherlock to take up musical therapy as a way of dealing with some of his trauma. 

“You said you played violin. Well, musical therapy’s been known to have soothing qualities, especially with PTSD sufferers.” George looks at Sherlock over his glasses. “It couldn’t hurt.”

And so Sherlock starts playing violin more often again than he has since the lead up to John and Mary’s wedding. John comments on it. 

“I thought you only brought that out on special occasions,” he says, relaxing into his chair to listen to Sherlock play.

“Why?” Sherlock asks, resting his violin against his chin but not taking the bow to it. He’s found a much better opportunity than musical therapy for this moment. “Does it make you think of Mary?”

At once, a darker expression comes over John’s face. “Don’t, Sherlock.”

Sherlock presses his lips together, considering John’s request. But, in the end, he ignores it. “Why, John? It’s been almost two months. You must have some idea by now whether you’re going to forgive Mary or not.”

“I’ve had other things on my mind,” John grates out.

“Oh? Like what?”

Somehow, encouraging John to talk about Mary—keeping in contact with Mary the way he has been—makes him feel as though he is part of that relationship. It’s almost as if, by reconciling the Watsons, he feels like he’s knitting his relationship with John closer.

John glares up at Sherlock, then resolutely away again. “Just _things_ ,” John says, pushing himself up off the chair, like he’s not interested in Sherlock’s music anymore. “You wouldn’t understand.”

But that doesn’t stop John from actively being there as often as he can to listen to Sherlock’s playing. Sherlock tries to be considerate of John’s sleeping hours. He doesn’t play early in the morning or late at night to be annoying; certainly he plays well enough that it’s _not_ annoying. 

As it turns out, it keeps some of the harsher ghosts out of his head. 

Still, John’s sleeping hours are erratic enough that Sherlock sometimes starts to play only to realise John’s woken up to it. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, each time.

“How could you know?” John asks once. “Without coming in my room to check.”

Their rooms have again become sacred spaces, without annoying text messages or traumatic stories prompting either of them to the other’s room. Sherlock blinks a couple of times to remind himself this is a careless, sleepy comment made on John’s part—rather than an invitation.

When Sherlock stalls, John says, “Don’t stop. I want to see you play.”

Sherlock looks at John through half-lidded eyes. But when it’s clear that this is not a trick—when John settles into his chair—Sherlock lifts the bow.

“What is it you would like me to play?”

“Anything,” John responds. “Whatever you like. I don’t mind.”

And so Sherlock starts to play again.

John’s face seems somehow softer when he’s listening to the music Sherlock plays. He often closes his eyes to hear the sounds more completely and, in those moments, Sherlock finds his own eyes unapologetically committing John’s features to memory. 

When Sherlock puts his violin away and John opens his eyes, the other man gives no indication of knowing. 

But that doesn’t soothe Sherlock’s mind. Weeks wear on, therapist appointments are met, music therapy goes on and John still gives no indication of his own mind. 

Mary, on Sherlock’s visits, is looking increasingly resigned and increasingly pregnant. 

It’s not good for any of them. 

“This cannot go on,” Sherlock announces at the end of a long day of paperwork finished off with an experiment in Molly’s lab. 

John, of course, has no idea. “What are you talking about?”

“It isn’t fair,” Sherlock states. “On Mary or... on me.”

John looked about ready to tell Sherlock off at this new attempt to bring John around to talking to Mary before he was ready. As Sherlock finishes the statement, there’s a different expression on John’s face.

“Or you?” he asks.

“Mary is pregnant,” Sherlock announces, completely sidestepping the direction of John’s query. “As I’m sure you’re aware, given you’re the one who impregnated her. She is increasingly not mobile and I’m concerned with how difficult things are going to get for her without help.”

John’s mouth flattens into a line at these statements, but at least now he’s listening. 

Sherlock starts to relax even at the same time as his heart sinks. “At the very least, you should visit Mary for the sake of your unborn child,” Sherlock finishes.

John considers this in silence for a moment. Then, with a sharp nod of his head, he stands up. “Alright then.”

“What are you doing?” Sherlock asks, as John looms over him.

“Exactly what you said,” John tells him. “We’re going to see Mary.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows rise. “I’m not coming too.”

“You bloody well are. You’re the one who’s been harping on the subject even though I’m not ready to deal with it yet. Well, now you’ve done it. You’ve got your way. And now you’re going to be there to make sure I don’t say something I regret later.”

It’s a convincing argument and it’s enough to get Sherlock out of the house by John’s side, even though Sherlock pipes up once more about his place not being in between their married couple.

“Shut up,” John tells him. “I think I can be the judge of where your place in my life is, if that’s okay with you?”

Although phrased as a question, the way John demands it doesn’t exactly invite a question. In uncharacteristic silence, Sherlock ponders that comment until the taxi drops them off outside the house that used to be shared between Mary and John. 

“John... what are you...?” she starts as she opens the front door to them. 

John’s gaze looks her up and down, no doubt seeing the baby bulge in her middle before he politely steps around her, just without actually saying anything to her. 

Mary’s gaze moves to Sherlock. “I didn’t know you were coming,” she says to him. He can see what an effort it is for her to keep her voice even. 

“It was rather... last minute,” Sherlock murmurs, lowering his gaze even as he leans in. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all!” Mary’s wide gaze turns from Sherlock to where John has strode in. It’s obvious that she can’t wait to actually see him again, and Sherlock doesn’t make her wait by the door. 

Once the three of them all stand together in the living room, there’s an uncomfortable silence. John has his hands clasped behind him, as does Sherlock. Mary’s fingers are interlaced by her belly. It’s a possibly subconscious gesture that even John can’t help but notice.

“So...” John clears his throat. “How’s the... The baby? No complications?” His forehead creases with this question. Sherlock supposes it’s reasonable that this conversation starts here. He himself was the one who made the baby John’s focus.

“She’s... She fine.” One of Mary’s thumbs escape from the interlocking and she rubs her belly absent-mindedly. “She’s...” A hesitant look to Sherlock, and then back again. “Do you want to feel her kicking?”

Sherlock starts because he was here visiting her yesterday and he doesn’t know anything about the baby having started kicking. As he looks back to John, though, he supposes it’s right that the father of the child should be the first to have the opportunity to feel the baby kick. 

John seems in two minds. He can’t seem able to bring his gaze from Mary’s mid-section long enough to answer the question for several long moments. Then, “Alright then. I just might.” 

He takes one jerky step, then another one. Mary waits patiently, only lifting her hands out of the way at the last moment. John’s hand is stiff and professional at first, even though he’s not an obstetrician. Then, as Sherlock watches, his fingers flex and his shoulders relax.

He can tell the exact moment when the baby kicks against John’s hand. 

“Hah! Was that...?” For the first time in a long while, John lifts his gaze to Mary.

“That’s her,” she answers, with a small, hopeful smile. 

John’s gaze softens, and he stands by his wife for long moments, waiting for the same miracle to happen again. Watching them, Sherlock shuffles and feels excluded for the first time since he was watching them at the dinner where John would originally have proposed. 

Luckily, Mary’s astute. After all their quiet catch ups, she’s come to know him quite well. 

“Sherlock?” she says. “Would you like to feel the baby kicking?”

“No, I don’t...” Sherlock shakes his head. It’s not that he wants anything to do with this baby stuff, he thinks. It’s just... Mary and John. He doesn’t want to feel left out. However, whatever happens now, the baby is going to be part of Mary and John. Sherlock takes a deep breath, and says, “I’ve never done this before.”

“It’s easy,” Mary says, and even John looks up at him this time. “Come on.”

She waves him over, and John steps to the side so there is room for both men to stand in front of Mary. 

A small smile creeps over Sherlock’s features the first time he feels the baby kick. 

“It’s magical,” John says softly.

“Yes,” Sherlock agrees.

*

Seeing Mary and the baby is just one interaction. John and Mary don’t talk about anything between the two of them at all. The fact of the baby kicking doesn’t solve all of the trust issues that lie between them. When John and Sherlock leave, there is no promise of a next time. John stands further outside the door, looking uncomfortably between the taxi they’ve called and the wife he’s about to leave. 

“I’m glad you both came,” Mary says, looking from Sherlock, to John.

John is biting the inside of his lip and, though he nods abruptly, he doesn’t say anything in return. Just, “Do you need anything?”

Mary’s eyebrows lift. “Do you mean...?”

“Food, rent. I mean, I’m paying for the rent, but...” John takes a deep breath in and out. “Are there any baby things that you require? I wouldn’t want her to go without.”

Mary gives a rueful smile. “I can assure you, we’re not going without.”

“Good. Good then. Good.” John nods and then returns his gaze to the floor. 

“I will hopefully see you again soon,” Sherlock says, in his deeper voice, deliberately keeping the gesture obscure in case John doesn’t like the idea of Sherlock visiting while he isn’t around. The last thing he’d do is deprive Mary of his company as well.

“I’d like that,” Mary replies with the same lack of commitment.

“Well, we’d better get going,” John says, turning towards the taxi again. 

For a quick, brief second, Mary touches then clings to Sherlock’s hand. “ _Thank you_ ,” she says, soft and fervent.

Sherlock nods, then resumes his place by John’s side.

*

“Are you happy now?” They’re in the taxi home, barely a block away from Mary’s house. John’s staring out the window when he speaks. 

Sherlock turns to look at him from the other side of the back seat. “About?”

“You _know_ what,” John hisses.

Sherlock does, and he knows better than to remain obtuse with John when the other man’s in this mood. “Doesn’t it feel better to have seen her?” Sherlock asks.

“ _Conflicted_ ,” John returns. “I feel conflicted to have seen her.”

“Conflicted? What for?”

“Because of her, because of having seen her, and what I feel for her. At least before, I was able to focus on how I feel about...”

Sherlock tips his head to the side as John cuts himself off. “How you feel about...?”

John firms his lips. His eyes stay on Sherlock’s for the longest time but, when Sherlock’s expression doesn’t change, eventually John’s the first to look away. “For such a smart person, you’re really dumb sometimes.”

Sherlock doesn’t appreciate being called dumb, but now hardly seems the time to bring it up. There really isn’t a lot of information to go on but, in the end, he picks only other being in that room it could have been. “The baby,” he guesses.

“Yes,” John says. The fight goes out of him and it’s like the topic of conversation has shifted. He just sounds tired. “The baby. What am I going to do about that?”

It doesn’t seem like a question John wants an answer to right yet, so Sherlock does him the favour of staying quiet. When they get back to Baker St, John walks up the stairs with a hunch to his back and immediately retreats into his bedroom for the night. At a loss over what to do, and because it’s been known to ease sore feelings for both of them before, Sherlock picks up his violin.


	15. Fix You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the most difficultly wrangled chapters I’ve written for this series so far. YOU’RE WELCOME. Written to [ Coldplay – Fix You](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY9b6jgbNyc), another song that has been added to my mental soundtrack for the story.
> 
> I always worry around this point in a story that I’m pulling Sherlock out of TV canon character. But then, I’ve also made him come face to face with things we didn’t see in the series. So maybe it’s with reason. No, seriously though, I hope this chapter is just as good as the rest up till now.

_“Don’t hurt me!”_

Sherlock's confronted by a child version of his own self that has no reason to know why to cry out like that. The voice echoes down a chamber and Sherlock feels himself as the child, defenceless to protect himself from the world. 

“Please, don’t hurt me.” 

Tears spring to the eyes of both the child and man Sherlock, but his voice doesn’t echo anymore. There’s a shadow looming over the child-Sherlock that isn’t Sherlock himself, and the walls are closing in. 

Sherlock feels himself unable to regulate his breathing, which is stupid. Mycroft taught him that at the age of seven. Those lessons are not doing any good now. Mycroft isn’t here. Neither’s Mummy. Or Daddy. Redbeard, or... 

Abruptly, Sherlock’s grabbed by behind and his trouble with breathing turning into full-blown panic.

_“NO!”_

Sherlock wrenches himself back to the living room at Baker St again. His child self is gone. The unknown predator is gone. Redbeard was never actually here, but John’s... gone.

“John...” Sherlock moans. He tries to bring his memory of how to regulate his breathing to the fore, but it keeps on slipping; he’s slipping...

“I’m here.”

The sound of that voice coming unexpectedly from somewhere else outside his mind is enough to snap Sherlock awake. His eyes stay closed for just a minute longer, but his mouth still works. “John?” His voice is quite different this time.

“Yes. It’s me.”

Only now does Sherlock dare to open his eyes. Yes, it is indeed John, sitting on the edge of his bed, eyes looking down on him in concern. 

Sherlock attempts to quickly drag himself together. “Sorry. I was, er...”

“Having a nightmare,” John finishes for him. “I thought you must have been, for some time, but I didn’t want to intrude. This is the... ahem... first time you’ve cried out.”

John’s been listening for him? John’s been _listening_ just in case he cries out in his sleep? For a moment, Sherlock’s so stunned he can’t think, can only stare at John in shock.

John reaches out a hand to touch his arm; innocuous, and not threatening. “Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yes.” If he’s not, he’ll make sure he will be. “I’m just fine.”

“Would you like me to make us both some tea?”

Sherlock makes the estimation it must be between one and three o’clock in the morning. Far too early for John to like catering to nightmares interrupting his rest.

“No need for that,” he utters, staring down. “I’ll be alright now.”

“Are you sure?” John asks. “Because I could use some tea myself.”

John’s still looking at him when Sherlock lifts his gaze. “Ah,” he says. “Well, if you’re already making it...”

With a smile, John says nothing else. He lifts himself from Sherlock’s bed to give the other man space before joining him in the kitchen. Sherlock hesitates. The mental images are still there, right behind his eyelids. But John’s face is there now too. John waking him up, being there for him when he came to. John making him tea so he doesn’t have to face those monsters alone.

John.

Sherlock wraps himself in his dressing gown before going out to meet John in the kitchen. 

John yawns while the kettle boils, but he waves Sherlock’s concerns aside. It’s inconvenient, because if he can’t focus outward, then he has only inward to choose from. He stands staring at the kitchen table for a long time, focusing on it despite its lack of doing anything remotely interesting.

“Sherlock.” 

From the way John says his name, Sherlock knows it’s not the first time the other man has said it. Indeed, he can see two steaming mugs of tea on the bench, and he didn’t notice John making either of them. Belatedly, Sherlock reaches out a hand to take the mug. He feels disconnected to it. 

John doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask him anything, doesn’t expect any answer for why he was woken up. He seems to have an innate understanding that Sherlock won’t want to talk about it. It’s not that surprising. John has always, since almost the beginning, seemed to know him better than anyone else. For a wonder, Sherlock is left to his own thoughts. Which is good, and bad.

In an effort to redirect those thoughts away from the false images his mind brought up in dream, Sherlock thinks back to that afternoon. Being with Mary, and John. Being invited, in that moment, to touch Mary’s belly; being _part of that moment_. 

Sherlock’s breath hitches. He’s immediately aware of it, and just as quickly gets it under control. His breathing settles into a four beats in, four beats out pattern that he concentrates on until he’s sure he won’t deviate from it again. He doesn’t even glance at John, lest the other man noticed something gone awry.

Only once he is sure of his emotional state does Sherlock allow his thoughts to drift back towards that afternoon. It has the air of a forbidden indulgence to it, like Sherlock can only look at it sideways, like he almost isn’t allowed to be here, really. Except, that’s not what it was like that afternoon. Mary’s eyes glowed as they trained on his. And John... John was there, experiencing the feeling of his baby kicking for the first time right there with Sherlock. 

It was a perfect moment. If Sherlock had planned it, he doesn’t think he could have choreographed it to better emotional resonance. 

Sherlock realises he’s forgotten his tea for several minutes, and takes a sip. It’s lukewarm. He sets it aside.

There was another life under his hand that afternoon. Premature as it may be, a _life_ was growing inside of Mary’s stomach. After this afternoon, it didn’t seem as though that baby was going to be something that took John and Mary away from him. 

Sherlock pulls himself away from that thought as soon as it hits. He blinks his eyes rapidly and checks his breathing. Erratic. Very. And _much_ harder to calm down this time.

John’s watching. 

Sherlock’s fingers take the corner of the kitchen table and cling tightly. 

“Sherlock, it’s okay,” says John. “I’m here.”

John still thinks that he’s reacting to the nightmares that woke him up. He can’t know, how would he know, the thoughts truly going through Sherlock’s mind? In this one instance, Sherlock finds John is utterly useless to him.

He shakes his head. “You can’t be,” Sherlock says. “Not right now.”

John looks confused, then shifts uncomfortably as Sherlock continues to refuse to look at him. But Sherlock must get this under control. Must remind himself that this, John living here, John _being here_ with him, it’s all temporary. He mustn’t get used to it. 

“It’s late,” Sherlock says, turning away from his abandoned tea. He has no idea whether John has actually drunk the tea he made for himself yet. “And we both have work in the morning.”

“I can take it off,” John murmurs.

“I don’t require for you to do that,” Sherlock says.

For a moment, John doesn’t reply. Sherlock can’t bring himself to keep looking away. The expression on John’s face is bittersweet, halfway between a smile and... something. “I know,” John says. His lips twist, and he looks down for a second. 

“John...” Sherlock feels stupid. It taken him all this time to realise there may be some other reason for John to be awake already at three in the morning. Too long to realise it.

“No.” John waves a hand in front of Sherlock without looking at him immediately. “I get it. You’re a completely self-sufficient, full grown man. As you should be.”

Sherlock understands. He can’t help feel that he’s come to understanding too late. Although both Sherlock and Mary have been aware that John’s been using Sherlock ill mental health as a distraction, John’s only just coming to the realisation right now. 

“John,” Sherlock says again. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Isn’t it?” John frowns, then nods. “How have you been sleeping lately?”

It’s like John, the doctor, is asking, but Sherlock is smart enough to know there’s more behind it.

Nevertheless, Sherlock’s not one to lie. Certainly not to John. “Apart from tonight, I have been sleeping better than I could have expected.”

Another nod from John. “And I? Want to ask how many sleepness nights I’ve had?”

Sherlock’s brows lowers. Surely this should be something he should know. He was used to knowing the pattern of John’s sleeping, before agreeing to go on medication that would equalise him.

After a moment, he says, “How many?”

“Too many to count.” John sighs. “I don’t think I’ve slept well since I...” A quick look at Sherlock, before John obviously changes what he was about to say. “Since I stopped seeing Mary.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Sherlock utters. And he is. He never wished John to suffer while living with him. He feels like he should have known.

As the roles change between them at the early hour of morning, Sherlock stands by silently and watches John work through his thoughts.

“You’ve been in god knows what hell for the last two years, and you’re coping with it better than I am after four years being back from Afghanistan. _You’re_ a high functioning sociopath, yet you’re managing to keep more healthy, close relationships than I am. You have a better relationship with, of all people, my wife.” 

John starts his speech slowly, as though marvelling at it all. By the end of it, he’s frustrated. Whether at himself, or at Sherlock, the taller man can only guess. John lifts his gaze to meet Sherlock’s. That his eyes are bright is the first thing Sherlock notices. That indicates frustration at himself, then. After that, the next thing Sherlock notices is that the former army doctor is shaking slightly. 

“John,” Sherlock says softly. “Sit down.”

He even goes so far as to take his hand off the table and move it as far as pulling a chair out for John. 

John looks up at him gratefully. There’s almost a smile on his lips, then he seems to remember something internally, and Sherlock watches that smile disappear. “My wife. Who _I_ am supposed to be supporting. On the one hand, I appreciate that you’ve been going to see her. On the other hand, shouldn’t that person be me?”

Sherlock manages to hide his shock at the back of John’s head. How did John know he had been visiting Mary? Had they made it too obvious while there today? Had Mary slipped John a clue that Sherlock had somehow missed? Sherlock doesn’t _miss_ these things. What was it, then?

He comes back to the conversation he’s having with John to realise a single tear has streaked down John’s face, resting currently on his jaw. John makes no move to wipe it away. Is he even aware of it? Sherlock lifts his hand from the back of John’s chair, now viewing it now as an extension of the fragility of the man in it. 

John speaks again, and there is horrible deprecation and hurt in his voice. “Do you know, it crossed my mind, that she somehow fooled you? About the baby? That she wasn’t pregnant at all? That it was just another fake. But I can’t lie to myself after today. I stood there, and felt that baby with my hand. _My_ baby.”

Sherlock muses over his memory of the same event from only moments before and lifts his chin. He, Sherlock, thought the moment was beautiful, perfect bar nothing. But John, John looks at the same moment and thinks...

“I am the worst human being in England.” He buries his head in his hands.

Behind him, Sherlock takes a soft breath. “You are far from the worst man in England,” he says, with feeling.

“Am I?” John finally turns to look at Sherlock again. The tear is no longer sitting against his jaw; his hands fixed that. Sherlock holds John’s gaze steadily. “Am I really? I’m the man who abandoned his wife to go back and live with his best friend.”

Here it comes, Sherlock thought, trying to break the news to himself gently. It doesn’t work, but he has no other choice to accept it while John’s looking at him the way he is. This is _marriage_. Almost everyone in their joint acquaintance saw fit to impart to him the importance of it before the event. Perhaps Sherlock should just feel pleased he managed to wrangle this relatively short period of time with John again after the marriage.

“You should go to her,” Sherlock says quietly. Behind him, he clenches his hands together so he can feel fingernails on the opposite palms. It’s the only reaction he allows himself. “Without me. If you feel like this, you should go to her.”

John hesitates a minute, then nods. “You’re right,” he says. “About everything. I _should_ be there.”

Sherlock delays a moment, making sure that all the movements of his body will be under his direct and conscious control before he does a thing. Then, “Yes,” he says, though the act of saying the word feels alarmingly like razor blades in the back of his throat. “You should.”

John exhales quickly out of his nose. His gaze breaks contact with Sherlock’s again abruptly. “Right,” he says. His voice is nowhere near so controlled as Sherlock’s. It is, in fact, shaking as dangerously as the rest of his body. “Exactly right.”

“John...” Sherlock starts, actively worried now about the extremity of John’s reaction.

“What?” John asks, swinging around to face Sherlock almost as soon as his name leaves the taller man’s lips. “What? If you have something to say, say it!”

The looming shadow from his dream lurches into the kitchen, splaying over him in the dim light of the kitchen. A fist drawn back, or worse, and Sherlock’s paralysed. Harsh words in a language he only half knows being shouted at him, and the terrified ten year old inside himself crying out, _“I don’t know! Please don’t hurt me!”_

Sherlock pales. “N-nothing,” he says, lowering his gaze from John’s immediately. He can’t bring himself to say anything more.

For several long minutes, John just breaths unsteadily in and out, not moving, not speaking. Sherlock as well doesn’t move, doesn’t look up. They are in a holding pattern, two broken men, each unable to reach out.

“Right.” The single syllable word from John is the only word to be uttered in the wake of the storm in the kitchen. He taps his foot once, twice. “Right.”

There’s despondence in his voice as he echoes this single word over and over again, an aching that Sherlock doesn’t know how to touch or relieve. He doesn’t look at John again as the other man’s heavy step leads him out of the kitchen. 

Only once does John turn around to face him. “Are you... going to be alright?” he asks.

Even in the midst of this, even still, John pauses to make sure Sherlock is alright. 

Sherlock is anything but alright. But he must make it up this once, to be able to convince John. He can’t be the one who lets John down. “Yes,” Sherlock answers, after scrunching his eyes shut for a single second. “Thank you for... for everything you’ve done to help.”

John nods curtly. He is only standing there in the arch between kitchen and living room another moment before he turns on his heel and is gone. Another moment passes, and Sherlock waits to hear the small click that signifies John’s closed the door to his bedroom.

He lets a long breath out.


	16. Ashes and Wine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait between updates this time. This is the chapter that was meant to go up yesterday. I actually had a weekend out this week ;)
> 
> This chapter was the hardest one to wrangle out that I've done so far. I hope it matches up as being good as you'all have gotten used to.
> 
> Written to [ A Fine Frenzy - Ashes and Wine](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj8COjwOrUI).

Sherlock doesn’t manage to get to sleep until just after dawn. Instead of sleeping, he listens out to hear if John’s actually sleeping. It seems unbelievable that John has been more attentive to _his_ sleeping patterns than the reverse. It would be unbelievable if it had been anyone other than John to say it. It goes to show Sherlock that he’s not been recovering nearly at all so well on his new meds as he thought.

When dawn arrives, and John is still asleep, Sherlock gets up from where he’s been lying on top of his blankets. He opens the curtains fully so that light floods his room, and then takes solace that he can rest in safety. 

When it’s late in the morning and Sherlock wakes up, John’s not in the house. He’s not one to sit by idle when there’s work that could be done. Checking his phone, Sherlock sees that there are no text messages or missed calls from Lestrade. He must have just about cleaned him out of work over the last week, and it seems the criminals of London have been largely unimaginative over the night. 

There are no interesting cases in Sherlock’s inbox, but it’s been a day or so since he last looked, so it takes him longer than usual to clean it out. When it comes around to just after midday, he texts Molly. 

_Anything interesting?_

There’s a short wait until Molly replies. Sherlock uses it to check on two of the many experiments he’s hiding from John sensibilities. 

_Not a very busy day today, I’m afraid,_ Molly replies. 

Sherlock huffs. While he’s still got his phone in his hand, he scrolls up to Billy’s number in his phone. It’s been a while since he contacted the other boy, not since just after John found them both at the crack den and sprained Billy’s wrist. 

The boy’s just another part of Sherlock’s Homeless Network now, and Sherlock doesn’t usually make a habit of contacting any of them for no reason.

This time, however, he does.

“How’s it doing, gov?” is Billy’s greeting.

“No,” Sherlock answers immediately.

“No?” Billy sounds questioning, but not actually confused. “No ‘sir’?” he surmises.

“Exactly.”

“So what’s with the call, man?”

Silence.

“Dude, are you still there?”

Again, nothing.

From the other side of the phone, Billy sighs. “You’re not going to let me call you anything cool, are you?” he calls.

“No.”

“Okay...” Billy ponders that for a moment, then asks, “What’s up?”

Sherlock asks if he’s been back onto the drugs again since he was recruited, only to act pleasantly surprised when he finds out not.

“As I said to Mrs. Watson,” Billy says jovially, “being part of your network keeps me off the streets.”

It doesn’t, really, but Sherlock knows what he means. The homelessness is now more of a job to him, than a state of being. Nothing of interest has happened on his part of town, though. Not that Sherlock expected it to have.

“Hey, gov, I mean, Sherlock?”

“Hmm?”

“What are you doing for Christmas this year?”

Sherlock eyebrows draw close. “Why?” he asks, suspiciously.

“Well, I mean, I thought, I don’t have much family in London. And they’re not really the type to spend Christmas with, if you know what I mean. And I was thinking, you’ve got family...”

Billy left it hanging. Sherlock knew what he was indicating. His first thought was to end the conversation immediately. Christmas still wasn’t for another couple of weeks, and was always best dealt with by not thinking about it until it became utterly impossible not to do so. Especially with having both come back from the dead and being shot this year. His parents were likely to be nightmares. 

Almost as fast as it takes Sherlock to think of this, he wonders how much chaos willingly bringing one of his Homeless Network into the Holmes house for Christmas will cause. He never even brought _John_ home.

“I’ll think about it,” Sherlock says. “Maybe.”

When John gets home that night, Sherlock’s working on an experiment that he knows John won’t approve of, simply due to the fact that everyone else was so _dull_ today. There’s parts of a possum and parts of a cat, both dissected, across the kitchen table. 

John, for a wonder, only looks down at these objects briefly, before ignoring them in favour of Sherlock himself. 

It’s as soon as Sherlock looks back at him that he realises John’s been to see Mary. Sherlock had lost track of time, otherwise he would have noticed John being home from work later than usual. What he doesn’t miss is the faint scent of Mary’s perfume, hanging around him, or the almost washed off lipstick stain on John’s cheek from where she kissed him goodbye. 

Turning away from the dissected animals, Sherlock gives his whole attention to John.

“I saw Mary today,” he says.

“Oh?” Sherlock says, aiming at pretend surprise. From the quick roll of John’s eyes, he realises he’s missed the mark.

“Do you mind if we... talk?” John asks. His eyes give a quick flicker towards cat and possum.

“Of course.” Sherlock crosses his arms in preparation, but remains where he’s standing. 

A second passes, and John glances at the animals again. Sherlock realises he’s supposed to pretend it matters that John is discomforted by such experiments in their kitchen.

 _His_ kitchen. He reminds himself of what he knows is coming sternly.

The two men walk out of the kitchen and take their usual chairs in the living room.

“I want to apologise,” John says, back to the kitchen and looking at Sherlock keenly.

Sherlock frowns. “What for?” he asks. 

“You woke up from a nightmare, and I was supposed to make sure you were alright. I didn’t do a very good job of that, unloading all my problems with Mary onto you. It wasn’t fair, and I’m sorry.”

Sherlock can count a handful of times people have apologised to him. He’s very rarely upset anyway but, on the few occasions it has happened, people more often assume he’s unhurt and don’t bother to apologise. That John’s different is one of the reasons he...

“I accept your apology,” Sherlock says formally. 

John’s head bobs. “Good. I was hoping you’d say that. 

Before John can say anything else, Sherlock says, “So, am I to understand you’ll be moving back out of Baker St soon?”

John looks up, startled. “Not... soon. Why do you say... soon?”

“Well, you’re speaking to your wife again. The obvious assumption is, if you manage to get along once more, you’ll resume your marital agreement.”

Sherlock watches as John’s tongue darts out to touch his lips. “That eager to get rid of me, are you?” he asks. The way his lips curve say he’s trying to say it as a joke. The way his eyes hurt says he doesn’t succeed.

“Not eager,” Sherlock says, lowering his gaze from John’s so he can think clearly. “Just practical. It’s bound to happen at some point. Why not soon?”

He doesn’t have the ability to tell John how it will hurt the longer this is dragged on, and he doesn’t trust John’s observational abilities to figure out it for himself. The most he allows his a shallow rise and fall of his shoulders in a silent sigh.

John takes a little while to talk again. “I see,” is all he says, and Sherlock knows he sees nothing at all. Sherlock can hear as he shifts in his chair. “Well, I can talk to Mary about it next time I see her.”

“You have arranged to see her again already?” Sherlock’s gaze lifts up with the interest of how closely he has guessed this. 

“No.” John looks weary. “But I can arrange to.”

“Oh.” Maybe it is possible that, with his emotional reactions, he has managed to misread something here. “John, I...”

“Don’t.” John lifts one finger up to stall Sherlock. “I have another something to say. An apology was first. A thank you is second.”

Sherlock’s breath pauses in his throat as he waits for John to speak.

“Last time you got me to do this, you had me at gun-point... well, bomb-point, anyway.” John’s eyes crease at the edges, and even Sherlock can’t help but share a small smile. “I wanted to tell you this in my own time, unharassed by the world around us. You are the most infuriating man at times...”

Sherlock’s smile disappears as quickly as it came and he shakes his head. He doesn’t think he can hear this. “John...” he tries again.

“No, let me say this,” John says, and Sherlock firms his lips but stays where he is because, once again, it’s John. “ _Despite_ that, you are the richest friend I have ever had. I am _so glad_ you came back. You gave me a place to stay when I needed one. In more ways than one. For some reason, you put my thoughts above your own often enough that it makes me wonder. You are...”

Sherlock doesn’t think as he closes the distance between himself and John. This may be the first time in 20 year. Suddenly, there’s no floor between them, and Sherlock has his hands touching either side of John’s face, fingers light as though he’s not sure—even now—what his reception’s about to be. If he thought ahead, he might have been able to figure it out. 

Though they’ve done this before, it’s completely different now when neither of them are drunk. It’s awkward, the way Sherlock’s half standing, half kneeling against John’s chair, but Sherlock’s hardly aware of that. John’s breathing quickens and his eyes are wide as though even he can’t believe he has Sherlock here, virtually kneeling at his feet. But then Sherlock leans the rest of the way in, or John leans forward to meet him halfway, and their lips finally touch. He’s definitely kissing John. It’s not planned, it’s not pre-rehearsed, like John’s statements undoubtedly were. Sherlock’s mind freezes as though doused with cold water shock.

It kicks back into gear as he realises John’s reaching for him, and kissing him back with equal ferocity. There’s a desperation to each of them, as though the time between kisses has taken a toll on both of their abilities for restraint. There’s no hesitation, no other consideration outside of the two of them as they grasp for one another.

“Closer,” John grounds against his lips. His voice sounds deeper than is his norm, more raw. 

Sherlock shuffles his knees closer to the chair John’s sitting in, eager to do what John’s asked. He doesn’t trust himself to speak. His heart is beating so fast that he’s vaguely concerned about cardiovascular complications, but even those can’t make him force himself away from one John Watson.

When they do eventually come back up for air, they’re still no further from each other than a finger span between their noses. Both of them are breathing heavily. Sherlock closes his eyes, for once not wanting to commit absolutely everything he sees at this close range to his mind palace.

“Oh, Sherlock...” 

Closed as his eyes may be, Sherlock can’t help but catalogue the sound of John’s voice. The rush of air on his face indicates the words were part of a sigh. The ‘r’ and ‘k’ sounds of his name are softened dramatically. Sherlock almost jumps out of his skin when John’s hand moves to rest against his cheek. 

“Look at me,” John murmurs. “Won’t you?”

Slowly, Sherlock lifts his lashes and looks up into John’s gaze. He can see a miniature reflection of himself in each of John’s eyes. He looks strange to himself, flushed and out of control. His hair is even more unruly than normal. He licks his lips, more to make certain the reflection he sees is actually him.

“There you are.” John says it with such a tender half smile that Sherlock’s heart stalls. His breathing hasn’t yet steadied—he’s not sure if it will ever again after this—but with these small centimetres between he and John, he is able to start thinking more clearly again. 

And, though it’s the last thing he wants to do, he can’t help but realise how irrevocably he’s complicated... everything.

“Hey...” John notices the second when skin bunches between Sherlock’s eyebrows and he evades John’s gaze. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

With eyes closing, Sherlock can only work his jaw. He can’t find words to answer John’s question straight away, but they are there shortly after, just within reach. “You’re married, John.”

That John scoffs at this shows Sherlock how little the other man has thought ahead. For the first time in a long while, Sherlock curses his own ability to do so with such perfect clarity. “It’s not been much of a marriage so far,” John says.

“All the same, you are not at the point of deciding to divorce.” Sherlock watches John very carefully as he says this. 

John takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, sitting back into his chair. The mood between them has been surely shot in the foot. Sherlock doesn’t give John space by looking away from him, doesn’t give either of them the option of lying to themselves or each other. 

“Are you?” Sherlock asks, softly.

“No.” John says this with honesty, despite it sounding like he would rathered have given a different response.

Sherlock nods once, then slowly picks himself up from the floor. Best have this conversation with space between them now. 

He can feel John’s gaze between his shoulder blades as he finds his own chair again. When he faces him again, John’s expression is pained. Sherlock’s lips twist. 

“It seems I’ve made a fine mess of this,” Sherlock says.

“No...”

At this refute, Sherlock lifts an eyebrow at John, still silently insisting on honesty. It’s all they have left.

John flushes. “It isn’t just you,” he amends. “I kissed you back.”

Though his eyebrows are still raised, Sherlock can’t help but be pleased John’s not trying to shuffle his way out of this behind a ‘not gay’ statement or similar.

“And I wasn’t drunk this time either,” John advises, as though following Sherlock’s thought process. 

“I had noticed,” Sherlock muses.

“Good,” John says, nodding. “Good.”

“Well,” says Sherlock. “Not good. We have to think about this. The last time we did this, you chose to stop seeing me.”

John struggles against this logic, but truth and history are behind them, and John has nothing else to argue. “No... we both chose,” he says, which is not much better.

Sherlock inclines his head, willing to give him that much. “In any case, we both agreed this wasn’t fair on Mary. What has changed?”

As it turns out, John doesn’t have an answer for this. Sherlock doesn’t either.

“I know my own limits,” he says. “I can’t do this again. Once was a mistake. Twice is design. I will not allow there to be a third time, not under these circumstances.”

Sherlock watches John’s Adam’s apple bob up and down as Sherlock lays this law down. A second later, John nods. 

“That seems reasonable,” John says. 

Sherlock purses his lips. The last thing he feels from inside of his head is _reasonable_. He’s seconds from yelling at John’s that this is not even remotely reasonable. Why can’t he see that? But, Sherlock supposes he has reputation enough for reason to pass through even this moment with it intact. 

“Yes, well.” Sherlock drops his gaze. “My only request is that you go back to her quickly. Mary,” Sherlock says, as though there were any room for confusion. “For all our sakes. Don’t make this more hard than it is.”

“I suppose you’ve made your mind up, then,” John says quietly.

No, Sherlock storms mentally. _I’m waiting for you to see how foolish this all is and choose_ me. Sherlock can only hope none of this shows outwardly. “Yes,” he says. “I have.”

John takes an unsteady breath out. “I guess I have a conversation I need to have with Mary, then,” he says, putting his hands on his thighs and pushing up. 

Sherlock can barely look at him as John starts putting together plans to get out of his life and back on track with the life he’s started with Mary.

“Sherlock.” He looks up as John says his name before leaving the flat. “Don’t think I’m leaving forever. We’ll see each other again.”

Sherlock think of how many cases he and John have actually been on since John and Mary got married. Even with John staying here for a short period of time in the middle, it’s been nothing like the number of which they used to get up to. Barely a quarter of the cases, Sherlock works out in his head.

But this is just another thing he doesn’t say aloud. “Of course, John,” Sherlock says, believing it not at all. 

John nods his head once. Sherlock makes himself watch as John steps out of the flat, then forces himself not to get out and watch for him by the window. Instead, he looks at the chair in which John just sat, and wonders how many days it’s going to be before he has to move it into the kitchen again.


	17. Almost Lover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To make up for a couple of days with no updates, here is a second update for you all. 
> 
> Written to Jasmine Thompson's version of [ Almost Lover.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o1GVKul38c)
> 
> Disclaimer: Cliffhanger coming up.

At Sherlock’s next counselling appointment, Sherlock has a different time and day to John and still, he goes. 

It’s ninety seconds into the session, just enough time for George to have invited him to sit down across from him. No other words have left George’s mouth. His mouth is about to open, predictably to ask him how his last week has been, but Sherlock beats him to it. 

“It’s no good. I’ve tried. I must conclude that I’m wholly in love with John Watson, and he doesn’t feel the same.”

Even George, a fully qualified counsellor, seems a little unsettled at this pronouncement, coming from nowhere at the end of four weeks of barely communicable sessions. 

“I see.” He takes his glasses off briefly to clean them, still managing to look up at Sherlock contemplatively in the middle of it. Finishing the clean, he pushes them back onto his nose. “And have you... spoken to him about this?”

“It would do no good,” Sherlock says. “John is married. To a woman, although that in itself isn’t the issue. I’ve finally ascertained he’s bisexual.”

George frowns. “And... uh, did he tell you this?” he asks.

Sherlock tilts his head to the side as he considers the mostly wordless admission from the night before. “More or less,” he surmises.

“And... hmm.” George presses his lips together, to allow himself a moment to think what he wants to say next. “Is he getting a divorce?”

The almost whimsical head tilt changes, and Sherlock pins George with the full force of his stare, without mirth. “No,” he says, hollowly.

“I see,” says George, with the air of someone who wishes he didn’t. “Well, the good news is that it’s entirely common to have crushes on people we can’t have.”

Sherlock purses his lips, very clearly stating without words that this is not what he wants to hear.

“Yes, uh...” George notices, and tries to change tacks. “How about you? Do you consider yourself bisexual?”

Sherlock’s jaw locks.

George tries one more time, steepling his fingers as though he’s comfortable asking this. “Why don’t you me about your past romantic history leading up to this?”

“There is none,” Sherlock says, deliberately omitting Janine for. She doesn’t count as anything more than a means to an end. 

George’s eyebrows lift. “None?”

Sherlock glances at George as if to say this is all very dull. “A few people in high school, and again in university, before they declared I was ‘strange’ or a ‘freak’. John’s the only one of consequence.”

“Okay. Why don’t you tell me what makes John so special?” George asks.

“Very well.” Sherlock goes to steeple his fingers. Then, upon realising George is carrying the same pose—which very likely he picked up from Sherlock—he flexes his fingers and places them too calmly on top of his thighs. “John is the only person who has stayed around.” 

Very evidently, George had an expectation of more than one sentence from his question. Then, abruptly, it’s like he remembers that he’s in session with Sherlock. “That’s everything?”

“No, it’s not _everything_ ,” Sherlock says savagely. “To stand here and account every positive quality of John Watson would take far longer than the fifty minute session we have available to us. It would prevent us from talking about anything of more important. Rest assured, I am already quite aware of his points and am ready to continue.”

George blinks. “Well then. Do you think you could list one? The most important, perhaps, as an example?”

After a very long sigh, Sherlock gives in to this badgering. “He makes me tea.”

“Makes you... tea?”

“What do they teach you in your years as a psychology major?” Sherlock demands to know. “Surely they cover nonsexual ways to be intimate with someone? Asexuality? Any of this striking a chord?”

For a moment, George can only gape at the hostility in Sherlock’s voice. Sherlock takes this as permission to continue. 

“Fine. I’ll spell it out for you. John makes me tea on a regular basis. This shows his concern for my wellbeing outside of his own, suggesting intimacy, particularly when combined with our close living quarters. It is tantamount to him making sure I have food to eat, which he does also.”

Sherlock stares at George expectantly.

George takes a breath and evades the keen look Sherlock’s still giving him. “Okay,” he says. “Hang on, wait. I thought you said he was married.”

“He is.”

“But you are sleeping at his house?” George asks.

“He is sleeping at mine,” Sherlock answers.

“So... why are you and John living together?” 

“He is currently estranged from his wife,” Sherlock snaps. “Keep up!”

“Before, you gave me a run down on what it is that makes John so invaluable to you,” George says, obviously trying very much to keep up. “But you said John knows none of this?”

“Well John, despite being a doctor, is sometimes not very bright,” Sherlock says, quite ignoring the several instances of late where John has said the exact same thing back at him.

“I see,” George says. “Has it occurred to you... that perhaps John, newly married, doesn’t wish to ruin your friendship by acknowledging your feelings for him?”

And just like that, the world stops around Sherlock. Sounds rush towards Sherlock’s ears, and he’s on the verge of batting them away when he realises that he’s not sure whether they are inside the room, or coming from inside his head. In any case, George doesn’t seem to be reacting to any sudden buffeting, so Sherlock has no choice but to assume that there is no real change in the volume of the room. 

If this counsellor wasn’t being so useless about John, he’d be able to talk to him about how often these new meds he’s been taking have not been doing the job of late.

George gives Sherlock time to digest his thoroughly unhelpful comment he placed on the table between them. Instead, Sherlock stares at George. George stares back. Without even looking at the time left on the clock, Sherlock stands up without notice. 

“I had been told it would help to reiterate things I had already concluded,” Sherlock utters. “It appears, in this matter, I was wrongly advised.”

Crossing the room, he closes the door quietly behind him. George doesn’t even try to stop him, despite the fact there are still twenty of their fifty minutes remaining.

*

Walking around on London streets, Sherlock feels buffeted by George’s thoughtless opinions even once he’s no longer in the other man’s company. Can it be true? All this time, John aware of Sherlock’s feelings, but keeping it quiet so as not to ruin their friendship? And then, like a fool, Sherlock kisses him, forcing John to face up to the fact of Sherlock’s feelings. Of course, Sherlock has finally made living with him completely untenable!

Sherlock stops in the middle of the street. Someone almost bumps into him from behind. They swear at him as they move around him on their way, but Sherlock barely even notices. The only thing that’s processing through his mind is, question and evidence: Is John finally sick of him?

He’s out of breath, and there’s a stain of pink across his cheekbones. He’s not sure of the direction his feet have taken in order to get here, yet somehow he’s standing outside of Mary’s doorstep. Confusion sweeps over him. He’s not sure whether, now he’s here, he should knock or walk away.

Thankfully, the decision is taken out of his hands, just as he’s turning to walk away again.

“Sherlock! You scared the bejesus out of me.” Mary is holding a hand to her chest and breathing in an unsteady way that should confirm her words. Not that Sherlock thinks of her as a liar anymore; not that he has for a long time. She frowns. “What are you doing here?” 

It’s a completely reasonable question. With the exception of when he and John arrived here, Sherlock has religiously called beforehand if he was considering a visit. Not that Mary’s ever said no to him, but it’s an internal rule that Sherlock has lived by.

Showing up here, like this, has broken that rule. But Sherlock’s pretty sure that a host of the rules by which he’s lived are pretty broken now. 

Perhaps seeing something in his face, Mary takes a step back. “Why don’t you come in?” she asks.

“You were heading somewhere,” Sherlock replies.

“It isn’t important,” Mary says, with the implication that Sherlock is. 

Instead of arguing further, Sherlock for once accepts it as it is, and precedes Mary into the house she once shared with John. 

“Tea?” Mary asks, putting on the kettle before Sherlock has had time to respond.

Sherlock nods to accept, clearly distracted. 

“Is John here?” he asks, mutedly.

Mary turns to pin him with a keen look. “No...” she says.

Sherlock shrugs miserably. “I’ve tried...” He takes a deep breath and, in that breath, seems to pull something of himself back together again. “I keep trying to bring him back to you.”

A peculiar expression crosses over Mary’s gaze as she purses her lips. Before this, she must have suspected what he’s confirmed. But it’s the first time either one of them have attempted to put it into words. 

“You have.” It’s not quite a question, but it isn’t a statement either.

“John belongs here,” Sherlock says, in that same muted tone, like he’s trying to reinforce something important to himself. 

Mary crosses the kitchen and comes to sit down opposite Sherlock at the kitchen table where she can take a good look at him. “Sherlock?” she asks carefully. “What’s going on?”

For only one second, Sherlock lifts anguished eyes, before lowering them to the table again. “Mycroft warned me about getting attached.”

“Your brother?” From the way that she responds immediately afterwards, it’s clear she has no problem with her memory if Mycroft has been mentioned before. “John’s right. You shouldn’t listen to Mycroft.” She’s still peering at him as she attempts this light banter, making it obvious that she knows something’s going on even if they’re not talking about it. “Tell me what’s happened.” Her voice is quiet, but insistent.

Sherlock opens his mouth, then shuts it again. Another moment of stillness, then he shakes his head. 

“This was a mistake,” he murmurs, pushing himself up.

“You haven’t even had your tea yet,” Mary says, standing also. 

Sherlock looks at her, really looks at her. Her colour is up, her eyes are wide, she’s breathing faster than is normal or probably good for a woman in her state. He realises again how erratic his own breathing is and attempts to master it. He didn’t come here to bother or fluster Mary needelessly.

He doesn’t know why he came here.

“Sherlock,” says Mary, again sounding quiet and in control. “This is obviously something to do with John. As you said at the wedding, we are the two people who love him most in this world. So, why don’t you tell me what’s happened and we’ll sort this out.”

Her eyes didn’t break contact with his the whole way through. Had it not been for that—had Sherlock sensed some kind of evasion or aversion to this conversation—Sherlock would have turned aside and told her to forget about it all, him coming here today, everything. 

Instead, somehow, she calmed him enough for him to sit back down again. 

“I think I’ve pushed him away,” Sherlock says. He rests his hands on the table and then stares down steadily at them. “No. I know I’ve pushed him away. In trying to send him back towards you, I’ve...”

Flashes of the night before rush past his inward gaze, and he knows he’s lying to her. To _Mary_ of all people.

He stops himself. “Mary. I have not told the entire truth to you,” he says, in quite a different tone this time.

Mary, who he can see is bracing herself on the other side of the kitchen table, responds with, “Okay...” like she’s ready for anything. Sherlock sincerely hopes that this is so. 

“John told you that we had kissed once,” Sherlock starts. “And after that, it was over, never to be done again. Except, last night, we did it again. John and I kissed, again.”

He says it so damningly, like it’s not something from which either of them can be redeemed.

Mary stares at him. Sherlock forces himself to lift his gaze and stare back. He expects that, at any moment, she is going to scream at him, or just throw him out of her house. He hopes that she just throws him out of her house without giving in to the obvious emotional outburst. 

Then, she does something incredibly surprising. She starts to laugh. Softly at first, as though she’s trying to keep it in. Her eyes are dancing with it, and Sherlock can’t understand it. He thought he understood Mary, but this reaction is so far from anything he’d considered a possibility. 

“What...?” he starts, but the full question is obvious. 

“You... and John... kissed only one more time?” Mary’s amusement spurts from relief, Sherlock realises. “When John told me about you kissing before, I thought... I thought with him moving back in with you, that...” She flushes, and it’s obvious what she thought even though it takes her a surprising run up to say. “I mean, it’s been clear how he feels for you. How you both feel for each other. To be honest, I felt like the interloper when you first came back.”

“Mary, you were never an interloper,” Sherlock says, tuning into the easiest statement to defuse.

Mary draws herself up as the last of the mirth fades from her eyes. “No. But we are alike, aren’t we? Both trying to keep each other in John’s life, regardless of our own feelings towards him?”

Sherlock shrugs, and he knows he’s missing something here because it never would have occurred to him to do anything else. “John deserves to be happy,” he says.

“Oh, indeed,” Mary replies. “But don’t we, as well?”

Mary leaves things on this note as she finally gets up to make them both the tea she promised at the start. Sherlock feels... better. It’s not exactly like when John calms him, but he thinks it’s close.

They go on to talk about other things for a while after that, including Mary’s pre-natal appointment that she’ll need to reschedule now because that’s where she’d been heading when Sherlock turned up.

“Tell them you’re going to be late,” Sherlock says, picking up his phone. “We can get a taxi there in 20 minutes if we leave now.”

“More like 30, with traffic,” Mary muses, but she takes Sherlock’s phone and makes the call anyway.

They make it there, Sherlock and Mary, with her gynaecologist happy to take them even though it means switching a couple of patients around. “I can’t do this for you again, mind,” she says to Mary, who readily agrees. 

Then the doctor turns her eye to Sherlock.

“Oh, is this the father, then? You’re very busy, a doctor yourself.”

“No,” Sherlock says, “not the father,” without offering any kind of reason for why he would be here instead of John. 

The gynaecologist accepts this without any further questions and it turns out that Mary has nothing to be worried about. Sherlock offers her his arm as they go to leave the hospital. 

“How could John not want you in his life?” Mary asks, as Sherlock hails another taxi to get them back to her house.

When they return, John’s standing in the kitchen.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand we're starting to swing back around to canon. Thank you for travelling with me on Air Whimsy. Please keep your hands and arms inside the carriage until we come to a complete stop...

“John...” 

Mary steps away from Sherlock and towards her husband seemingly without anything more than instinct. Sherlock and John’s gazes meet and Sherlock finds it impossible to look away. 

John opens his mouth, closes it again, then opens it. “Uh... I’m sorry... am I late?” he asks, turning his face towards Mary.

“No,” she answers quickly. “You’re right on time.”

“And... how did the gynaecologist appointment go?” John asks, with some hesitation and another look in Sherlock’s direction.

Sherlock crosses his arms and takes half a step back. The motion gets Mary’s attention and she glances his way before returning her eyes to John. 

“Nothing to report,” she says, trying a small smile. “Our baby is healthy.”

“Thank god for small mercies,” John says, letting go that concern in favour of others.

“John, I...” Sherlock licks his lips.

“No, I’ve thought about your words from last night and,” John draws himself up. “It’s only fitting that you’re here while I talk to Mary.”

In all honesty, here is the last place Sherlock would like to be while John has his conversation with Mary.

In drawing himself up, John turns to Mary and takes one of her hands. With a single look in Sherlock’s direction, she fixes John with her whole attention. Sherlock can see how she hardly dares to breathe. 

“I’ve been thinking. If there seems any chance you and I can work things out, any chance at all, it’s best for the baby if I’m close by.”

Just like that, he realises it’s already too late. He thought, after a prerequisite amount of time passed, it would be harder for him to bear it when John eventually forgave Mary and went back to her. Now, John’s going away, and Sherlock already knows he’s going to be shattered.

Mary’s breath comes shuddering out of her. “For the baby,” she echoes.

“Yes.” 

Slowly, very slowly, Mary nods her heads and comes to an agreement. “That would be good,” she says.

Not ‘I would like that’ or ‘That’s wonderful’. It’s quite obvious that, just like Sherlock, Mary is disappointed by this agreement. It’s less than she was hoping for, yet it’s John back under the same roof with her again, so she can’t refuse. Sherlock reminds himself to exhale.

“I’m not going to be here every night. Obviously, if there’s a case we’re working on that goes late...” This said with a glance over to Sherlock.

Sherlock just hopes that his expression stays at least vaguely stoic. 

He sees Mary gaze his way too. Although telepathy has been scientifically disproven on multiple counts, he feels something pass between them at that moment. 

_But don’t we deserve to be happy, as well?_

Said only several hours ago, by her, in this very kitchen. She hasn’t forgotten it, and she won’t stand in the way.

Her lips curve in a small smile, before she faces her husband once more. “Of course,” she says smoothly. 

John gives a perfunctory nod. “Good. Well, that’s that, then. I’ll grab some of my stuff from Baker St tonight, and I’ll be back here after dinner.”

“Would you like me to keep dinner for you?” Mary asks.

John looks at Sherlock. “No. I think we can manage this time.”

He doesn’t wait even until they’ve gotten into a taxi together this time, before opening up the most recent matter between them concerning Mary.

“Happy?”

“Happy?” Sherlock echoes. “Why would my happiness factor into this?”

John’s eyes widened. “Well, if it doesn’t, I’m doing this quite wrong,” he tells him in no uncertain terms.

Even Sherlock understands them. The arrangement just made between John and Mary, it was made with Sherlock in mind. 

Christmas draws closer. In short order, John’s doing something that looks vaguely like living between both Sherlock’s and Mary’s houses without committing to either. Given John’s pronouncement, Sherlock makes an effort to put aside the paperwork with Lestrade and accept only practical cases. He’s sure Lestrade is as pleased about this as he is. 

“Good to have you back, lad,” Lestrade says, clapping him on the back. He’s pleased to see John back as well, and makes an offer to go out with him for drinks afterwards. “Haven’t talked properly in ages. You too, Sherlock.”

Sherlock doesn’t take Lestrade on his offer of a drink, though that’s not a surprise to the other man. However, he feels a bit jealous that John agrees during this time allocated to Sherlock. 

“Are you sure you won’t come with us?” John has the consideration to ask. 

“I have far too many interesting things at home to indulge,” Sherlock says, privately hoping this will make John change his mind too.

It doesn’t. “Guessing dinner’s part of the plan?” John asks, as he and Lestrade start to head away.

Sherlock knows his feelings of jealousy are ridiculous, especially when John stumbles in after eleven and stays in his room at Sherlock’s. 

“Nice night,” John mumbles. “Wish all cases ended this way.”

“With a night at the pub?” Sherlock wonders.

“No. With a happy ending. No people dead.”

“Right. Yes. Of course.” 

John frowns and stumbles in the direction of Sherlock in the living room. “What’s up with you?” 

“Nothing’s up with me,” Sherlock says, covering. “It’s just more interesting to be around you drunk when I’m drunk too.”

John, having been around Sherlock far too long to be offended, swings back with, “We can arrange that.”

Sherlock sighs. “The sherry in the cupboard is for experimental use only.”

John’s blown raspberry tells Sherlock exactly what he thinks of this. “Come on, Sherlock. I’m pretty sure I have some wine around here? Now... where is it?”

Sherlock pauses, realising he’s already used a bottle of wine he found in the back of a cupboard in the last few months. He hadn’t known how it got there. John’s sudden foraging answers that question for him.

“Never mind,” Sherlock says. “I suppose I can drink the sherry.”

“I knew you would. It’s too fun for you to be drunk with me to want to miss out.”

“Yes. Fun.” Though he tries to hide it behind dry humour, Sherlock can’t help but notice that John is quite utterly adorable right now. He’s been around drunk people before and never thought as much. Obviously, it’s just another thought relevant only when beholding John. 

He sips the sherry, despite the fact that John points out that’s not going to get him drunk very fast. He’s not aiming to get drunk, more to get to a point where his brain slows down just a little. He hopes nobody comes into the flat this time looking for them to solve a case.

John, meanwhile, is busy telling Sherlock in detail the dinner he just had with Lestrade.

“You should have been there,” John says.

“I’m sorry I missed it,” Sherlock says indulgently, and is surprised to find he means it. 

“Well, that’ll teach you.” John is trying for stern, but his drunken slur makes it sound ludicrous. “You’ll have to be there next time.”

“Definitely,” says Sherlock, not meaning it at all.

Sherlock drinks, slow and steady, for about an hour, until John starts nodding off in his chair. He comes to at one point with a start.

“I’m glad this arrangement is working out,” John murmurs. His eyelids are still half over his eyes, and Sherlock wonders if he’s still awake or whether he’s sleep talking. “Sometimes, I feel a bit selfish. But you seem happy-er. And Mary is happy. She asks after you a lot, you know.”

Sherlock didn’t know, but he can guess it’s so. He’s kept a bit of distance from Mary since John partially moved back in. Mostly, that’s to give John and Mary some time and space to be John-and-Mary again. But, also, he doesn’t quite know how to respond to her now that all the cards are on the table.

“Tell her I hope she’s very well,” Sherlock says. 

“She is. Very well, that is. I’m almost starting to enjoy married life again,” John admits.

That gives Sherlock a moment of pause, though he knows that it shouldn’t. “I’m... glad for you.”

“Mm,” John says, with another dip of his head that indicates all this is some kind of sleep-conversation. “Me too.”

After another lull, John comes to wakefulness and starts with trying to pry himself up off the chair. 

“I should go to bed,” he tells Sherlock. 

“You should,” Sherlock says, feeling a bit of the same tiredness tugging at him.

“I don’t...” John seems like he has to work hard with his words. “I don’t think I can get to my bed. Would you... would you help?”

Sherlock’s jaw almost drops. “You would like help...”

“To get to my bed,” John finishes for him.

It’s not a proposition. John doesn’t have the wherewithal around him right now to follow up on such a proposition. Still, Sherlock notices his heart rate increase despite himself. Sherlock will have to talk to Lestrade about the appropriate amount to allow John to drink on nights out from now on. 

“Sure, John. I’ll help you to bed,” Sherlock says, launching himself out of his own chair and crossing over to John’s.

John snores _loudly_ that night. It’s almost consolation for John being so far away from Sherlock. He sounds like he’s much closer.

*

The medication Sherlock’s on makes it easier to think, something Sherlock appreciates as he deals with the emotional issues regarding John and Mary. It doesn’t consume his mind the way it might have in past months, and Sherlock is able to resume his private hunt of Magnussen. 

On Christmas eve, John comes back to Baker St so late that Sherlock thought it was going to be a night he spent with Mary. He comes in without talking to Sherlock and proceeds to turn on his computer without saying a word. Sherlock’s keen eye spies a data key with the letters A.G.R.A sticking out of the side of John’s laptop.

For obvious reasons, it’s not reading he can do in the house he shares with Mary. Sherlock wonders that he hasn’t seen him reading from the stick before now. He’s still reading by the time Sherlock goes to bed.

Both John and Mary have an invitation to the Holmes family Christmas party—much to Mycroft’s chagrin—as well as Billy, of course. John doesn’t rise by the time Sherlock’s ready to leave at midday, and Sherlock isn’t about to wake him. He’s the first of the three of them to arrive, although Billy’s in the kitchen, talking to his mother already.

Mary follows shortly after. Her sharp eyes catch him immediately and she asks for a private word with Sherlock, much to Billy’s amusement, and Mycroft’s dismay. 

“So,” she says, once they’re standing outside together. She’s heavily pregnant now, so much more noticeable since the last time he saw her. “How have things been?”

“They’ve been... well,” Sherlock answers. “Lots of cases.”

“Hmm,” Mary says, giving no indication on her own how she feels about that. “I didn’t expect, once John started being home more regularly, that you would cut out of my life completely.”

There’s censure in her tone, as well as her face, and Sherlock identifies that he’s hurt her. Possibly badly. 

He frowns. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be sorry. I kept asking John about you, thinking he’d pass those thoughts onto you and prompt you—”

The slight change in Sherlock’s expression gives him away. Mary only narrowly refrains from hitting him with one of her gloves.

“He did pass it onto you, didn’t he? Why, Sherlock? Why would you keep yourself so distant?”

Looking at her, Sherlock realises that all the reasons he’s given himself about that are not good enough. She’s waiting, and trying to be patient—she’s spent most of the year trying to be patient—but it’s wearing thin now.

“I thought it was for the best,” Sherlock says eventually, in summary.

Mary just stares at him. As he strongly suspected, this reason is not good enough. 

“Thought it was best,” Mary repeats. “That I exchange my husband for the man who has become another best friend to me? Well no. That’s going to stop and you’re going to start visiting again as soon as Christmas is over. Understand?”

Mary is, perhaps, the only person in the world apart from his mother who can talk to him like that. Sherlock bows his head. “I understand,” he mumbles.

Her gaze glints. “Good,” she says, and after that it’s like her smile is infectious. 

By the time John arrives at the Holmes house, Mary is almost ready to pass out. He almost feels bad when he spikes her tea and she falls unconscious with the rest of them. It isn’t about trust, it’s about protection. In hindsight, it may not have been the _smartest_ plan he’s ever come up with, but it gets the job done, and John and Sherlock are flown to Magnussen’s personal mansion. John’s gun is heavy in his jacket. He walks differently when he’s carrying, though Sherlock doubts it’s something anyone but him would notice.


	19. Chapter 19

It’s only when standing in the doorway of the blank, white room Magnussen calls his mind palace, that Sherlock realises how badly he has miscalculated. Would it have happened if not for his breakdown over these last months? Impossible to say. What he can say is that he knows what he’s going to need to do. For Mary. And for John. 

John, of course, is still a few steps back on the idea that there is no physical proof in Magnussen’s vault. As it is, Sherlock’s glad for John’s confusion, for Magnussen’s condescension distracts the older man from Sherlock’s stunning realisation. 

He’s going to have to kill Magnussen. Sherlock screws his eyes shut with a look of despair. He knows what’s coming.

Sherlock knows Magnussen isn’t like Moriarty. Even when playing as Richard Brooks, Moriarty was still the world’s most dangerous consulting criminal. Sherlock had only to prove it. 

Magnussen, above all else, is just a businessman. 

A wildly unethical, conniving, sorry excuse for a business man, yes. Every bit as psychopathic as Moriarty, yes. As he stands there and starts to flick John’s face, still only one fact bears relevance. 

Magnussen is still just a business man.

“Sherlock,” says John, expecting him to stand in because Sherlock has always been there to rescue him. 

And he’ll do it again, but it will be different this time. 

“Let him. I’m sorry.” Sherlock’s so much more sorry than John can know—more sorry than Sherlock can say—with Magnussen flicking John’s face. Sherlock is sorry for shooting Magnussen. For being taken away and incarcerated afterwards. For leaving John alone, but for Mary. For not beginning to visit Mary again as immediately after Christmas. For not being there to find out where—if anywhere—this thing between him and John could have gone. He’s sorry he won’t be there to watch John and Mary’s child grow up. Sorry that he won’t get to take Mary to anymore gynaecologist appointments. The world doesn’t have enough ‘sorrys’ to it, and all of his are to do with disappearing from the Watsons’ lives.

Yet, if he doesn’t—if he allows Magnussen to win, to live—the Watsons aren’t going to have much of a life at all.

In a last ditch, desperate attempt, Sherlock’s eyes scan them and around them for any possible alternative, any small thing he might not have yet seen. He’s not at the top of his game and now he’s been put face to face with just how much that is so, but there’s one thing he knows and that’s that there’s _always_ more than one option.

Except, this time, apparently, there isn’t.

Sherlock takes a deep breath. All of the strides he’s taken forward, none of them are going to be worth anything once he does this.

He gives himself one last chance to back out, which he knows he won’t take.

Stepping around to John’s coat pocket, Sherlock relieves him of the gun he’s got there. Funny, John knew he had this gun the whole time, but he never thought to use it. 

That’s the difference between John and Sherlock. “I’m not a hero,” says Sherlock, training the gun on Magnussen. “I’m a high functioning sociopath.” 

The gun goes off and Magnussen has no time to react. Magnussen drops and the whole world descends into chaos.

*

He’s given a six month sentence, which is better than the incarceration that he thought would come out of it. It’s worse, also, because of the death sentence at the end of it. 

“If anyone can handle it,” Mycroft says to him when they’re alone, “it’s going to be you.”

Sherlock would have quipped that that was almost funny coming from someone who knows his history in abusing heroin and morphine. No doubt he also knows about the anti-psychotics that make up part of his cocktail of medication. But Sherlock can’t quite manage to make the words come to the fore. The pain standing out in Mycroft’s eyes is too real for Sherlock to discount. 

He doesn’t really believe Sherlock’s going to come out of this alive. These are just words that people say.

When they’re standing on the airstrip, with the plane ready to take Sherlock away, Sherlock turns to Mycroft. “Since this is likely to be the last conversation I’ll have with John Watson, would you mind if we took a moment?”

In the last three days, Mycroft has shown his heart on his sleeve more than Sherlock has seen in his entire life time. Despite it all, despite all warnings to the contrary, it seems that it really is true. Mycroft is attached to Sherlock. 

As his brother steps aside, Sherlock puts him out of his mind in favour of John. 

He hasn’t told John what he knows from Mycroft: that this isn’t likely to be a mission he’ll come back from. John thinks that Sherlock will be back in six months. A slap on the wrist for killing a man. A mission that only Sherlock could fulfil and everything will go back to normal again. 

He even got Sherlock a six month prescription on all of his medications.

“Here,” John says, trying to keep it light. “So you don’t backslide before you see me again.”

Sherlock’s heart clenches at the words _see me again_. But he won’t tell John. He decided that on the way here. But there another thing he hasn’t quite made a decision on yet.

“John, there’s something I should say. I’ve meant to say it always, and then never have. Since it’s unlikely we’ll never meet again, I might as well say it now.”

Sherlock readies himself, readies himself to let John know about his feelings once and for all. Every word he’s said is correct; there’s no downside to it if John doesn’t feel the same way. He won’t be wrecking the relationship; he won’t be changing anything.

But then, there’s also no benefit to saying the words now, and then walking into a plane and out of John’s life. Forever.

Does he really have the right to burden John with this knowledge, knowing something that John doesn’t?

John’s waiting for Sherlock to finish his speech. There’s a light in his eyes, like he’s hoping for... something. Sherlock swallows the words that were hesitating so close to the tip of his tongue. He just... can’t.

“Sherlock is actually a girl’s name.”

The light in John’s eyes dims, but he recovers from it brilliantly. “It is not,” he says, falling back into the familiar banter between them. 

Sherlock glances over John’s shoulder at where Mary’s standing. She’s got her hands bunched up in front of her and seems like she’s straining to hear the words that pass between Sherlock and her husband. Sherlock gives a slight shake of his head, meeting her eye. Mary’s tension releases, her shoulders slump.

Sherlock returns his attention to John. “It was worth a try,” he says, more to himself than to John.

“We’re not naming our daughter after you.” 

As Sherlock gazes at John, he realises that John is as clueless now as he was in Magnussen’s mind palace. And that’s okay. Annoying as it is in other people, it’s one of the things Sherlock feels indulgent about when it’s John. It’s one of the things Sherlock _loves_ about John.

With a final deep breath, Sherlock makes himself turn away from John. If he doesn’t do it now, he’s never going to. And that would be a fine last image for John to hold of him; Sherlock being manhandled into the plane while shouting he doesn’t want to go. Sherlock has enough mental images stamped to the walls of his mind palace to be able to pull him up at any time for the rest of his, short, life. It is done. He can’t draw this out any longer. His pride won’t allow it.

Only once he’s in the plane does he relinquish the iron control that got him through the last few minutes with John, Mary and Mycroft. A tear falls down his face. Sherlock tries to pretend he’s unmoved. It’s not until the second tear falls that Sherlock’s face crumples. 

He’s not coming back. It wasn’t worth it, not any of it. It wasn’t worth it.

So many tears follow the first two. Sherlock doesn’t remember crying like this since he was a child but, somehow, he manages to keep from regressing back to the scared boy in his mind palace. He needs to approach this strong, and he’s not sure how far he can scrape himself back without John. 

Reaching into his jacket, Sherlock pulls out the bag of pills John so solicitously got for him, and takes his daily dose. It helps, marginally. He should have taken it this morning, but this morning was busy and he couldn’t take it without people watching. He’s going to have to get better at that now.

As he reassembles his emotional space into something more resembling order, he can still feel the stiffness of tears dried on his face. The flight staff leave him alone so he doesn’t have to talk to anyone. He has only his own mind, his own thoughts, and his own mental pictures of John to see him through. 

A phone rings. Sherlock’s startled at the sound of it. He wouldn’t have thought planes were allowed to be on yet, given they’re still rising up off the ground. Still, the phone is on and it gets answered, and then the flight staff aren’t leaving him alone anymore. A man is standing by him, holding a phone out for him and telling him it’s his brother.

Staring at the screen in shock, Sherlock sees that it is indeed Mycroft calling. He’s not sure how his voice is going to sound so he takes a moment, humming under his breath before answering to make sure that he’s not going to somehow shame himself. 

“I’ve only been gone for four minutes.” Whatever else he is, Sherlock is explicitly aware of time as it passes. 

“Well, I certainly hope you’ve learned your lesson. As it turns out, you’re needed.”

Sherlock thought he was needed at this top secret, six month mission. That he’s been put through all of this only to be called back makes him irrationally irritable. 

“Who needs me this time?”

*

_Moriarty._

Sherlock knows that his mind should be on however Moriarty has managed to get out of his mind palace—Sherlock shakes his head; Moriarty was _dead_ \--how he has come back to life again. Unfortunately, in the hours following the conversation which he was sure was going to be his last with John, it is not so easy to turn his head to other thoughts.

He reaches for John and Mary, careless that Mycroft is watching, considering this new situation. He does try to pull himself together after that. But he can see the sympathy in John’s eyes, the knowledge in Mary’s of what Sherlock is, and exactly how far he’s willing to go for them. She had obviously thought she was the only one willing to go to great lengths for her family.

They have always been more alike than both of them think. This day is just proof.

John and Mary don’t want to leave when a car comes for them. It’s a credit to both of them that they try to stay while Mycroft’s men hustle them away. They almost come close to procrastinating those men as long as Sherlock often does. He’s made a game of it, though, over the years. The Watsons are outmatched.

“Now wait _one moment_!” John asserts, drawing himself up, every inch the army doctor. His official tone pauses the men for a moment, but one look from Mycroft sets them back on their course.

John is looking out of the window of the car, pressing himself against it, as they are removed. Sherlock can read his name on the other man’s lips. As the car turns to drive away, he meets Mary’s gaze through the back window. Her hand lifts in a wave. 

She’ll be holding him to that promise to start visiting again after Christmas. Sherlock has never been more glad of anything.

“Come along now, brother,” Mycroft says, shaking his head as the car disappears. “What an embarrassing display.”

Sherlock thinks it’s far from embarrassing, and he knows he’ll never convince his brother of it. 

He stays with Mycroft to be debriefed. They don’t know very much yet, just the fact that Moriarty’s face has been on screens all over London for the last hour and the most important people in London have only just managed to override the system.

“To be honest,” Mycroft says running a hand over his eyes. “I’m not sure we didn’t crack it when we did because Moriarty was done with it. For now.”

More words that should have been ominous. Sherlock nods his head and listens to more words from important people of state, but he’s distracted. Occasionally, someone pauses waiting for Sherlock to weigh in. He’s not known for his subtlety. But Sherlock only assumes a contemplative stare and waves for them to continue. There’s no reason to rush this, so he stays till the end.

Mycroft’s driver sees him home just a little before midnight. Baker St is quiet. Quiet, and empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Naww, okay, I'll be writing _one _more chapter after this. (It’s like I totally can’t resist! >.__


	20. Epilogue

He doesn’t wait two full days before fulfilling the last promise he made to Mary. Of course, the fact that’s it’s been that much time since he last saw John has something to do with it. 

Of all things, it’s John who answers the door, proving to Sherlock that John hasn’t simply ceased to exist while Sherlock’s been handling the backlash of the televised trick concerning Moriarty. 

“ _Sherlock._ ” John steps out of the house and grabs Sherlock into a tight hug. For once, Sherlock doesn’t fight it, doesn’t refuse it. He even manages to make himself relax into the other man’s embrace. It lasts for too short a time. “Come in,” John says, with urgency, as he pulls away. “Come in!”

“I didn’t mean to intrude,” Sherlock says. Looking around, he can’t see Mary in the house. “I promised Mary I’d start visiting again.”

“Does it look like you’re intruding?” John stares at Sherlock incredulously. “I’m over the moon to see you, you... git.”

Sherlock’s mouth firms. “You didn’t come to visit me. After...”

“After...” John shakes his head. “It’s been _two days_ , Sherlock. Last time I had to wait _two years._ I figured, with Moriarty appearing again, you’d be busy for at least a few days.”

Sherlock takes a moment to consider this point before relaxing. It is true. John does have a good point there.

John sees the moment Sherlock relaxes again and smiles himself. “Can you stay long?”

“As long as you want me here,” Sherlock says, in a rare moment of unguardedness. 

John beams anew. “I’m so glad you said that. I’m so glad you didn’t have to go away for six bloody months. I’m just... _so glad._ ”

“John? Such an outburst of emotion isn’t like you,” Sherlock observed.

“Well,” John says, lifting his chin. “I’m working on that.”

“And how’s that going?” Sherlock asks, from behind half closed eyelids.

“Well, it was going well,” John says, a little bit. “Until you made me feel defensive about it.”

“I apologise,” Sherlock says immediately. “Never take emotional advice from a high functioning sociopath.”

But John just shakes his head to that. “I don’t believe it.”

“Believe what?” Sherlock asks.

“Believe you. High functioning sociopath.” John’s lips thin as he contemplates his best friend. “Nope. I think you just adopt that persona so you don’t have to deal with the boring stuff.”

How astute. In order to keep from incriminating himself further, Sherlock keeps his own council. 

“Hmm, I thought so,” John says. “So how is the medication going?”

Ah. The medication. That’s how John would have been able to tell. A quite different cocktail would have been required to combat against true sociopathic traits.

“Tell no one,” Sherlock demands, barely moving his lips.

“On one condition,” John says, a little cheekily.

“And that is?”

“Tell me how you feel.” John crosses his arms over his chest. “Since you’re not a real sociopath, you must have real feelings. About me, even.”

Sherlock looks down his nose at John. “I told you all those feelings at your wedding,” he says.

“Indulge me,” John says. “While there’s no one else around.”

“Mary...” Sherlock starts.

John shakes his head.

“Then I should come back later,” Sherlock says. “I told her I would visit her.”

“And, because she isn’t here, you’re going to walk out on your best friend?” John lifts an eyebrow. 

“When you put it like that—”

“Imagine this room as a train carriage.” John reaches out and repositions a salt shaker in the middle of the table. “This is a bomb. And _you_ are going to tell me nice things in the last minute before you think we both may die.”

Sherlock’s gaze flickers from John to the salt shaker. “John, this is ridiculous.”

“Is it? Why?”

“Because we are in no conceivable danger from a salt shaker.”

“We were in no conceivable danger from a bomb you had already defused.” John meets Sherlock’s eyes squarely. “I even promise I won’t laugh afterwards.”

“John,” Sherlock says very quietly. “Be careful here. You don’t want to open a box that may be impossible to close afterwards.”

“Oh,” says John, “I’m counting on it.”

Sherlock’s nostrils flare as he looks at the innocent salt shaker once more. John doesn’t say anything, giving him just as long to consider this as he needs. But even Sherlock’s great intellect isn’t likely to get him out of this. John can be a bulldog with an idea when he puts his mind to it. 

“John.” Sherlock stares at his best friend, ready for John to recoil at his first words. He has it all in his mind, not all that different to what he told George when the counsellor concluded that Sherlock had managed to push John away. “The very last thing I want to do is push you away. Please remember, afterwards, that you asked me to do this.”

“I promise I will,” John says solemnly. 

Sherlock takes another breath. There was evidently nothing for it. “I think you are the finest specimen of a human being to walk this earth. Whether or not we are engaged in physical activities, it is my dearest wish to just be near you. I have never been happier than when you have given me your attention.”

He comes to a stop then, both because he has run out of words, and because he dreads that he has already said too much.

“Now remember,” Sherlock says, judging that his voice is now slightly shakier than it was before. “You promised you would remember you asked for this.”

“I remember.” John’s expression is tight, but he refuses to look aside from Sherlock. After a moment, he speaks again. “I want _you_ too, you daft fool. I’ve tried to tell you heaps of times,” John continues. “But _you_... you always seem to manage to find a way of talking me out of it. Or changing the subject. Or plain, just, walking away.”

He seems to be out of breath as he comes to the end of his diatribe. 

Sherlock licks his lips. It looks like neither one of them are sure where to go from here, now with the combination of both their words stark in the kitchen. 

“I...” Sherlock starts, then can’t think what to say. He fails, and shakes his head. He feels like he should have deduced this. Not necessarily early on, but at least had an inkling that this was so. The kisses alone... Sherlock wonders that, after the last few days, he may not be quite so smart as he thinks. “But where does that leave us?” he asks, the second later, before either of them get more than a taste of the euphoria that comes with their admissions. “With you, still married. And Mary... I won’t go behind her back. It’s not right.”

“Mary understands.” John waves away Sherlock’s concern as though it’s nothing. “We’ve been talking about it. It didn’t seem like it was going to happen with you being sent away for six months, but before that... She’s okay with it. The only problem she had now was that you didn’t seem to want to visit her anymore.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrow, his brain pinning on one particular comment. “She’s _okay_ with it?”

John misunderstands the reason for Sherlock’s sudden change in mood. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to speak with her before you. It’s just... she was easier to talk to about it, okay?”

Sherlock snorts. It might have been laughter, only more bitter. “Your _wife_ is easier to talk to about your feelings concerning _me_?”

John still looks abashed, but Sherlock sees he’s going to have to make it still more clear.

“You dared speak to Mary about your wishes for infidelity?” Sherlock’s eyes narrow still more. John’s going to have to explain himself well to get out of this. Sherlock _likes_ and _respects_ Mary. If this is just another way for John to pay her back for not coming clear with the truth straight away...

John’s eyes widen, and Sherlock sees he’s finally clued into Sherlock’s meaning. “Oh,” he says. “ _Oh!_ ” His head shakes frantically, and suddenly he can’t get the words out fast enough. “She brought it up. Before, when you first came... back to life. And then after... when I’d been living here with you for months. She had... questions.” John’s hands rose and fell with gesturing. 

Sherlock considers this for a while. Of course. Mary’s a smart woman. Besides, he’d spoken to her on the matter himself. And, he had to conclude, on none of those times had Mary seemed aversive to sharing John.

“Were you completely truthful with her?” Sherlock has to ask.

“Yes,” John says without flinching.

“Was she pained to hear it?”

“I wouldn’t say... pained.” Indeed, John’s expression took on a curious hue and Sherlock wondered exactly how Mary had heard it.

“What would you say, then?” Sherlock presses.

“She had... many questions.” It’s not just a hue, now. John is definitely flushing at the memory of these questions Mary had to ask.

Sherlock moves on. “Does she think accepting this,” a rough gesture between the two of them, “is the only way to keep you in her life, and that of your baby?”

“God, no, Sherlock.” John’s face changed dramatically at this line of questioning. “God,” he says again. “What do you think of me?”

It’s obvious his question has upset John far more than Sherlock intended it. He looks... hurt, even.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock says, ducking his head briefly.

“It’s okay,” John says, somewhat warily.

“You understand, these are things I need to know,” Sherlock tells him.

“I know.”

“I made a promise.”

“To all of us, I remember.” Then John lifts his eyebrows. “But can’t you see, this would go a long way towards fulfilling pretty much every part of that vow.”

Sherlock’s brow knits. “How so?”

A sound of frustration forces its way out of John. “Do I really... Fine. Taking care of us, every day. You think that... being with me, in that way, won’t fulfil the promise you made?”

Sherlock frowns, still refusing to see. “But Mary...”

“Sherlock! Please, listen to me.” John does his very best to calm down after his initial outburst. “Mary is ecstatic at the idea that, as she put it no less, her favourite two man may finally be smart enough to find happiness with each other. I know. _Believe me_ , I pressed her enough about it myself.”

Still quizzical, Sherlock lifts a hand—hopefully casually—to his chin. “She said that,” he asks.

“ _Yes_ ,” John says.

Sherlock presses his lips together and ponders John for another moment. John, remarkable patiently after all the rest, gives him that time. 

“So...” Sherlock drags the word out, still in the midst of his contemplation. “Suppose I was to... agree to this arrangement.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” John lifts his head and turns away for a second. Not long, though. He’s too captivated by whatever Sherlock might say next to turn away long.

Sherlock waits for him, then says, “What would happen next?”

John gives a frustrated sigh. “Trust you to completely ruin the moment where we finally tell each other...” he starts. “But, next, we would start the, inevitably long, process of... figuring out what we wanted in a relationship with each other.”

“A relationship.” Sherlock says the words flatly though, to tell the truth, they on their own seem the most harmless of those spoken yet.

“Or not,” John says quickly. “We wouldn’t have to call it a relationship. If you didn’t want to.”

“No...” Sherlock nods once. “I think I could be happy with the word.”

He doesn’t miss the small smile of relief that lifts the corners of John’s lips. “Okay then,” he says.

The two men look at each other, _really_ look at each other for a moment longer. Then, for some reason beyond his control, Sherlock can’t quite help but break the moment. 

“‘Okay with it’.” Sherlock takes the opportunity to turn Mary’s words over in his head again. “What exactly do you mean, okay with it?”

“With _us_ , you fool.” Abruptly, John tires of describing things with words. He leans in and kisses Sherlock.

It’s Sherlock’s first kiss in too damned long.

John leans back. “God. I hope that was okay,” he says. Worry abruptly creases his forehead. “I’ve never done that with another guy before.”

Sherlock suddenly catches up. His arms twine around John and he turns his mind palace over for memories of the ways to make humans into puddles through the careful application of a little bit of tongue.

“Wow,” John breathes. “Don’t have to ask if that was okay. That was one hell of a kiss. Mary’s gonna be jealous if I tell her how good that was.” 

Sherlock grows serious, and he blinks before looking down at the kitchen table.

John lifts his hand to thrust through his hair again. “God, now I’m the one being daft,” he says. “I mean... I’ve talked to Mary, but I haven’t asked how you feel about the package deal. Me, Mary and the baby.”

Sherlock again doesn’t understand. So many times in ten minutes must be some kind of record, but this is not an area he is incredibly experienced in. 

“The package...” John says, almost seeming to lose his courage. “I mean, I know it’s a lot to ask, sharing me with someone else...”

“Are you offering me... are you really offering me yourself?” Sherlock asks. Even now, he can hardly believe it.

John licks his lips. “Well... yeah. Yes. I guess I am.”

“I accept,” Sherlock says resolutely.

“Even with... Mary?” John asks again.

“With Mary, the baby, and everything. I want to be a part of your life.”

“You are a part of my life, Sherlock,” John says, as though Sherlock has wished for something silly.

“No.” Again, Sherlock tightens his hold and pulls John closer. “I mean... part of your life.”

“Oh,” John says, this time catching the minute difference in tone. 

Moriarty can wait another day. It’s hard to be as focused on that as he should be with John in his arms.


End file.
